“Disclosure Day” Movie Review
Key takeaways
- His most recent feature, “The Fabelmans” (2022), was the kind of piercingly confessional work that might have put a lesser filmmaker out to pasture (not that a lesser filmmaker could have made “The Fabelmans”).
- The opening scenes of his new blockbuster, “Disclosure Day,” offer up a hilarious answer: a pro-wrestling match, of course, for a rejuvenating dose of adrenaline.
- Soon, Daniel has fled with his girlfriend, Jane (Eve Hewson), and a device loaded with incriminating evidence, which they plan to make public if Scanlon and his minions don’t kill them first.
Spielberg, though as nimble an entertainer as we’ve got, will turn eighty this December, and the halcyon overachieving years of “Jurassic Park” and “Schindler’s List” (1993), “Minority Report” and “Catch Me If You Can” (2002), and “War of the Worlds” and “Munich” (2005) seem far behind him. His most recent feature, “The Fabelmans” (2022), was the kind of piercingly confessional work that might have put a lesser filmmaker out to pasture (not that a lesser filmmaker could have made “The Fabelmans”). After digging deep into his formative memories—chief among them his childhood surrender to the movies, which would define him, and which he would forever redefine—where, exactly, could Spielberg go next?
The opening scenes of his new blockbuster, “Disclosure Day,” offer up a hilarious answer: a pro-wrestling match, of course, for a rejuvenating dose of adrenaline. It’s a more pummelling kind of Spielberg spectacle than we’re used to, and also a canny diversion; in the bleachers, a far more consequential clash of wills is secretly playing out. Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor), a sharp-witted cybersecurity expert, plans to blow the whistle on the sinister non-government agency wardex, short for Waived Reporting, Development, and Extraction. His former boss, Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth), is determined to stop him from exposing the group’s secrets: namely, that alien life-forms exist, and that the agency has concealed evidence of their visits for decades.
Soon, Daniel has fled with his girlfriend, Jane (Eve Hewson), and a device loaded with incriminating evidence, which they plan to make public if Scanlon and his minions don’t kill them first. Explaining his Snowdenesque attack of conscience, Daniel insists that the truth isn’t proprietary but, rather, “belongs to eight billion people.” He’s not alone in his conviction. Several other wardex employees have also gone rogue, led by Hugo Wakefield (Colman Domingo), who helps Daniel remain (barely) one step ahead of his pursuers. They also have a potent, if unknowing, ally in Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt), a meteorologist from Kansas City, Missouri, who abruptly finds herself over the weather. Delivering her morning report, she begins emitting guttural click-click noises, as if she’s been possessed by a Predator. What does this mean? And how, for that matter, can she suddenly read people’s minds?