Alright! Today I'm reviewing the latest film from Steven Spielberg, Disclosure Day, which follows a whistleblower on the run from an evil agency after stealing definitive proof that aliens are real. As this happens, supernatural gifts awaken in a weather woman, leading the two of them to cross paths and reveal this truth to the entire world.
To start off, I'm going to say that I did not like Disclosure Day very much, most of which has to due with a graph of runtime-to-payoff. This movie clocks in at 2 1/2 hours and the entire thing is a very deliberate slow build to the titular "Disclosure Day," wherein alien footage is released to the world. The other two hours are a generic spy thriller with an evil organization, a villain whose wife died, a car chase scene, a train chase scene, a visit to a hotel where the badguys find them, and the occassional appearance of Colman Domingo.
The sci-fi elements are practically nonexistent aside from a generic cylinder that does whatever the plot requires of it, sometimes blowing up when people press it too hard and sometimes surviving car crashes and jumping out of moving vehicles. It's not the macguffin (that's the footage of the aliens talking to Richard Nixon), but it is a weird little thing that shows up every now and then to create and/or resolve drama. How will the badguy find them? He spies on them using his own cylinder. Where should the girlfriend of the hacker guy go for the second half of the movie? She's taking care of the cylinder. The badguys found them, but how do they escape? The cylinder makes them invisible. How will they get the power back on? Use the cylinder. Whatever happens, it is essential that the cylinder remains unharmed.
I liked the powers that Emily Blunt is imbued with, a mix of telepathy, heightened empathy, the gift of tongues, and foresight - exactly the sort of low-brow powers that an alien could feasibly give without becoming a superhero story. The subtle influence it has on others reminded me of the One Ring, and I appreciated how grounded that felt. Josh O'Connor's superpower - understanding math - was decidedly less interesting and completely irrelevant to the plot.
Steven Spielberg's direction is the only thing that prevents Disclosure Day from being a total snoozefest. The way he builds atmosphere is impressive, and the fact that the film was engaging throughout its two hour slow burn is an impressive feat in and of itself. The action scenes are all well shot, the drama is melodramatic, and the eventual appearance of the aliens was superb. John Williams' score, while not bad, mostly appears to smooth over scene transitions and lacks notability.
The movie is set against the backdrop of a potential WWIII - various comments are made by TV anchors about an upcoming conflict between the United States and Russia, with North Korea also being name dropped. This interesting detail unfortunately does not factor into the story in any meaningful way. It almost seems like they're setting up for a Watchmen-type unification after the alien reveal, but no, that plot point goes literally no where. None of the characters seem concerned about it, no one references it, and the only time it visibly affects the world is when a gas station is more crowded than normal. To be completely honest, it might be a completely ADR-added plot thread to explain why there were so many people getting gas at a random Casey's in Oklahoma.
The CGI animals in the movie reminded me greatly of the ones from Snow White, and the most interesting scenes - shoot, the only interesting scenes - are highlighted in the trailer (The crop circles don't factor into the movie at all and their purpose is completely unexplained). The pacing improves once the two leads meet about an hour and fifteen minutes into the movie (!), once again improves once they meet Colman Domingo an hour and a half in, and finally becomes cool when the actual Disclosure Day happens two hours in.
I liked the alien designs! A few people online seem disappointed that they're the stereotypical short green dudes with giant eyes, but I dig it. Seeing them walk alongside Richard Nixon was truly a pure cinema moment, as was the reference to Roswell, New Mexico. Their ship designs were classically wonderous, and I like the language they invented. Courtney Grace, the reporter who delivers the Disclosure Day report, gives the best performance of the movie and brutally outmogged Emily Blunt.
Emily Blunt is an exceptional actress, but her performance is hampered by the boring and nonsensical plot. Her childhood trauma is vaguely referenced at the start of the film by a boyfriend who says she talks in her sleep; later, her childhood home is completely reconstructed by Colman Domingo so she can remember the night the aliens abducted her. I genuinely cannot remember how or why he knew to reconstruct her childhood home; I also do not remember why making her remember the aliens' abduction was so important. The scene ends quickly and the movie continues, sadly unobstructed by aliens, when the villains find and chase them to the TV station. The short flashback was my first hint that the slow-burn of Disclosure Day would not pay off nearly as much as I had hoped.
When that meaty slow-burn is served and the movie ends, I am left with very few takeaways. There is no prevalent theme or moral, no obstacle the characters overcome. No laughs were had, no tears shed. No feelings were felt at all, except for the general awe that comes from a well-made alien prop and doctored footage of an alien meeting with President Nixon. There's a concern that the existence of aliens might upend people's faith in God and human beings as His supreme creation - that concern is completely resolved when a nun says people would be fine and to stop worrying about it.
This is a personal thought, but I also wonder how many people would genuinely care if alien footage was leaked. Between the U.S. government releasing dozens of UFO videos every year and the "I guess this is how it is now" apathy of the Millennials and Gen-Z, if the BBC posted proof of aliens tomorrow I don't know if anyone would care. Everyone seems too justifiably worried with what's going on below the stars to care about what's happening above them.
Overall, I give Disclosure Day a 4/10. "Disclosure Day has aliens in the same way Transformers: Age of Extinction has dinobots."
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