Ironically, this won’t be a full disclosure review. I’ll keep it light on spoilers.
Disclosure Day is the latest offering from director Steven Spielberg. It closes out an unofficial ‘benevolent aliens’ trilogy that began all the way back in 1977 with Close Encounters of the Third Kind and continued in 1982 with E.T: The Extra-Terrestrial.
Anyone looking for a more direct link between these movies will be disappointed. Disclosure Day exists on its own, although definite echoes of Close Encounters of the Third Kind exist within its characters’ journeys.
Disclosure of the plot
Without spoiling the plot too much, Disclosure Day concerns a group of people struggling to reveal the US Government’s knowledge of extra-terrestrials to the world, and the agency trying to stop them.
Emily Blunt and Josh O’Connor play two people with special abilities that make them important to both parties. Colin Firth plays the head of WARDEX, the unofficial Government agency dedicated to suppressing knowledge of aliens since 1947.
The cast is fantastic, particularly Colin Firth. Nepo babies Wyatt Russell and Eve Hewson play supporting roles. Both are excellent, if a little underused (especially Russell).
That Spielberg flare is evident straight away, with innovative, beautifully framed shots, long takes, drone shots, lens flares and other director flourishes that never seem invasive but show a master at work.
I also love how real it all looks, with minimal obvious CGI. It’s early June and I’ve already had my fill of CG-heavy cartoon worlds for this summer, thanks to The Mandalorian and Grogu and Masters of the Universe. And we’ve still got Supergirl to look forward to. Yay.
The visuals are complemented, as always, by John Williams’ score. I thought he retired after the last Indiana Jones debacle. As I watched Disclosure Day, I thought somebody did a very good John Williams impression with the score, but it was him all along.
Disclosure of the flaws
That said, the movie is a little indulgent, clocking in at 2 hours 25 minutes. Scenes drag on too long and the movie’s pacing is off at times. Spielberg drops us into the middle of Act One at the start, and the ending is abrupt.
You won’t mind the extra length if you are invested in the characters’ journeys, which I was, at least this time around. My decision to go into the movie relatively cold, without having watched the trailers, was the correct one.
Like Close Encounters of the Third Kind before it, Disclosure Day is a decent one-time watch. The journey is a fun ride, but once it reaches its destination, you wonder what it all meant.
The backdrop of Disclosure Day is a world on the brink World War III, but it’s so far in the background that it doesn’t provide enough of a sense of urgency. The thrust of the movie should be that revealing the UFO information might pull the world back from the brink.
It’s kind of there, but so far down in the mix that it gets lost. Characters discuss the potential implications but don’t link it back to the impending war. There is also a faith-based argument going on – does the existence of aliens disprove God? It is interesting, with a thoughtful conclusion, but not really the point of the movie.
Certain character actions in the last act are inconsistent with what we’ve seen in the previous two-and-a-half-hours. What should be the conclusion of a character arc is a sudden 180-degree face-turn with no explanation.
Disclosure of my overall rating
By the end, it isn’t clear what the result of releasing the UFO evidence is. The movie ends with no clear resolution to the plot or any of the relationships. Perhaps that’s the point – humanity has to write its own ending – but it needed a more definitive conclusion to make the movie mean something.
Disclosure Day is well made, well acted and contains flashes of Spielberg magic. It also struggles to stick the landing and say anything meaningful about humanity and our place in the world.
I can’t help but think that Disclosure Day was undermined when Donald Trump released actual classified UFO information and nobody cared. Perhaps that’s what it all means – nothing. I’m giving it 3.5 stars. It will probably drop to 3 if I watch it again.
