REVIEW:
Disclosure Day is director Steven Spielberg’s return to the alien genre. This is the man who made Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. But his fascination with aliens didn’t stop there, and in the more recent decades of his career, Spielberg also made the War of the Worlds and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (which featured aliens.) So, it’s safe to say this guy is a little obsessed with the genre, the same way that Ridley Scott is obsessed with epic historical war movies and Rolan Emerich is obsessed with disaster movies.
But Spielberg is also one of the greatest living directors of all time. Chalk that up to the movies he made in the eighties and nineties, from the Indiana Jones films to Jaws to Jurassic Park. Unfortunately Jurassic Park, back in the nineties, was also the last truly great Spielberg film. Minority Report, in the early 2000s comes close, but that’s where the line is absolutely drawn. Which is to say that this mega-talented filmmaker has definitely lost his touch, over the past few decades.
In more recent years, Spielberg hasn’t turned out much worth remembering. A weird video game inspired movie, Ready Player One, a movie about his childhood (The Fableman’s,) and a West Side Story retelling. That’s about it. So it’s nice now that he’s back in the director’s chair for a completely original movie, not based on a book or a previous movie, and also featuring a story about aliens. The problem is that the movie is just okay. It’s certainly great in the first half, but then goes on and on, way too long, the way that great filmmakers of the past generally tend to make their movies today (Scrocese, Coppola.)
The first half of this movie, Disclosure Day, is all about the mystery. Emily Blunt plays Margaret Fairchild, a news reporter who comes across a bird that flies into her apartment, and then suddenly is experiencing a whole new way of life. She speaks alien gibberish on the air as a weather reporter, and when she looks at a person can tell everything going on with them and their lives. She knows people’s darkest secrets, and is willing to turn this into a means for giving advice, and helping herself get out of situations. Now, some of that is familiar territory. There are so many movies where a character knows things about people, that stun the people who are being told about their own lives by a stranger. From Groundhog Day to countless Santa Claus movies, it’s a well-worn trope. But here, it’s just a small part of the much larger mystery, including government shadow organizations and aliens.
We experience the first half of the film through the relationship between Fairchild and her boyfriend, played by Wyatt Russell, who are tying to make sense of her strange situation, together. But then there’s another main character here…Daniel Kellner, (played by Josh O’Connor from Challengers and Wake Up Dead Man, the third Knives Out film.) Kellner is a scientist who stole secrets from the government. More specifically he stole recordings of aliens from that secret shadowy organization. And now the organization is after him.
The movie opens on Kellner and his story. It throws us right into things, as Kellner is being chased by this organization, and meets with them to get his girlfriend back, who has been kidnapped by them. From there, we start learning more and more of the story of these two characters, and what Daniel has and knows, and why this organization is after him. Then there’s also Hugo Wakefield (played by Coleman Domingo,) who is Daniel’s point of contact, the man who he is constantly calling, and who is giving him advice. Domingo is perfect for this role, as the older mentor-like character.
All the while, Daniel continues to be chased by the organization, which is run by Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth.) And Scanlon has a process of using an alien artifact, that looks like a wand, to see through the eyes of a person he is concentrating on. He then uses this to look around the room that the person is in, scanning the room for anything that can tell him where the person is. Once he has that information, he sends his goon squad out to find the person and get them.
The alien tech is pretty cool. So are all the chase scenes. Up to a point. The move looks great, and Spielberg moves his camera around, using both practical and computer effects seamlessly. The tracking shots here, such as in a car while characters are driving, with the camera panning back and forth between characters talking, are terrific. They remind my of Matthew Vaughn’s flawless camera work in his Kingsman movies.
All of this is on full display in the first half. The chases include a number of cool moments, such as when a car drives through a house twice. And they all lead up to a car chase scene that is absolutely fantastic, where a car is knocked into a moving train. This is by far the best scene of the movie. Now, we’ve seen the setup for this sequence a thousand times before, where a car is being pushed closer and closer to a moving train, but then the train finally passes or the car breaks the grip of the pushing car, and speeds off. Either way, the victim car never actually gets knocked into the train. Until now. Spielberg shows us what happens when the car does indeed collide with the train, and the result does not disappoint.
The first half of this movie really works. The chases are great. The mysteries are great. Everything is firing on all cylinders. And then the movie just keeps on going. And going. And the more it goes on, the more silly it gets. I mean, there’s actually an invisible house at one point. All the while, the chases continue, which just makes the movie feel repetitive. There’s only so many times you can see this shady organization show up looking for our protagonist and then chase them around. This is why a movie shouldn’t be over two hours long, and generally should come in under that amount of time. It’s because the movie wears out it’s welcome. What was great in the first half becomes tiresome and repetitive in the second. This is definitely a good movie, that could have been a whole lot better had they been willing to make it tighter and not go on longer than it needed to.