Disclosure Day ~ Review

By: [email protected] on
Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day is a lot of movie. It’s a Hitchcockian man-on-the-run chase thriller with some of the most thrilling chase sequences put to film this year. It’s a sci-fi parable about the nature of truth in an era when “truth” seems to always be in question. It’s funny and heartfelt with questions about faith and religion. But finally, it is one of this year’s best films.
 
To summarize Disclosure Day, I will need to spoil a bit of the story. So, what follows will not go beyond what has been, uh, disclosed in the trailers. However, I recommend going into the film as blind as possible, as its twists and turns are best enjoyed without much prior knowledge. Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor) and his girlfriend Jane (Eve Hewson) are on the run. Daniel is an analyst for a data firm that has some shady dealings with the Department of Defense, and he has smuggled out critical classified information. With the help of Hugo (Colman Domingo) and a handful of others, they intend to release the information to the world. Hot on their trail is Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth), the nefarious head of the organization who will stop at nothing to thwart Daniel and Hugo.
 
Meanwhile, Kansas City weather reporter Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt) is having a really strange day. One minute she’s speaking in Russian (a language she does not speak), and the next she’s speaking in nonsense, gibberish, guttural clicking, freaking out her boyfriend, Jackson (Wyatt Russell). In the background of all of this, North Korea and the United States are on the verge of World War III. How this sprawling cast of characters is all connected, and what exactly is going on, I will not completely reveal here, but it is extraterrestrial in nature.
 
Spielberg is clearly having a blast concocting Disclosure Day’s unique chase sequences as characters get into and out of insane jams, in ways that only Spielberg could devise. The film’s chases recall the director’s own Minority Report, with a touch of Close Encounters thrown in. One particular scene involves a train that had me giggling with the cinematic joy Spielberg is having. What makes  Disclosure Day so potent, however, is that it is all about the fight for truth. David Koepp’s clever script (with a story credit from Spielberg) asks if it is right that there are people who materially benefit from keeping the truth from us, but if that truth were revealed to the world, just how much would it screw everything up?
 
The cast across the board is fantastic. Josh O’Connor brings humor and warmth to a man doggedly determined to get the information he has obtained out into the world, no matter the cost. Emily Blunt is funny and heartbreaking in equal measure as a woman trying to come to grips with the insane things happening around her. Colman Domingo brings his usual gravitas to the film, and some of his scenes were genuinely touching. Colin Firth chews the scenery as the villain of the piece, but he does manage to give Scanlon a bit more depth than sneering platitudes. While Eve Hewson rounds out the cast as a woman who finds herself questioning her faith with all the genre stuff going on around her.
 
The film is not perfect; there are some effects shots that do not quite add up, one character goes missing during the third act, which felt like a serious omission, and some of the dialogue is a little clunky. However, blockbusters with actual ideas are in short supply these days, and I will take what we can get. Like Project Hail Mary, Disclosure Day says that connection and understanding are the most important attributes humans can strive for, and that is an admirable theme.
 
Three and a Half out of Four Stars