Disclosure Day
The idea of aliens among us, visiting our world to explore either unobtrusively or overtly is one Steven Spielberg has returned to many times in his career, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T. – The Extra-Terrestrial, War of the Worlds and, more tangentially, A. I. Artificial Intelligence and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, reuniting with his collaborator on many of those projects and Jurassic Park, screenwriter David Koepp, for Disclosure Day.
A thematic summation of these previous films, Disclosure Day is a science fiction conspiracy thriller set in a world on the brink of World War III, events far away from Kansas City television weathergirl Margaret Fairchild and her musician boyfriend Jackson and ex-con hacker turned cybercrime specialist Doctor Daniel Kellner, recruited straight of prison by Wardex but now on the run with his girlfriend Jane Blankenship by the sinister agents of his employers.
Simultaneously feeling like the middle chapter in a larger story, unstarted and incomplete, yet also needlessly padded to almost two and a half hours as though the sheet bulk of the film will grant it significance beyond its collectively mediocre parts punctuated by preposterous car chases and improbable escapes which depend on dozens of agents all looking the other way as their quarry sneaks up behind, Disclosure Day very badly wants to be a Serious Motion Picture but lacks originality or depth.
Starring Wake Up Dead Man‘s Josh O’Connor and The Adjustment Bureau‘s Emily Blunt as whistleblower Daniel and photogenic Margaret, spontaneously speaking live on air in alien tongues only he can understand, Colman Domingo’s Hugo Wakefield sits atop the conspiracy of truth within the conspiracy of silence led by Noah Scanlon, played by Colin Firth with a permanent scowl, while Wyatt Russell’s Jackson serves only to push Margaret forwards with his reticence to support her, convinced she is suffering a psychotic break as she is telepathically guided to an unknown destination; so far, so Roy Neary.
Eve Hewson’s ex-novitiate Jane given more involvement, albeit superficial, it is her who brings Daniel to her former convent for off-grid shelter, Elizabeth Marvel’s Sister Maura as sagely, oblique and distant as Hugo as she peers over the top of her spectacles, but attempts to frame fundamental questions of truth versus a comforting deception in a Christian context are shallow, never addressing that the lie is always about controlling the masses or that disclosure is necessary for consent, that bearing the burden of truth is the difference between responsible adults and pandering to sheltered children.
Hugo attempting to release classified information on a global stage, effectively allowing the world to exercise free will while perhaps opening Pandora’s Box, Noah is Old Testament, stern and bearded as he exerts power from afar and enters the minds of those susceptible in order to command them to kill, a beneficiary of his exalted position who abuses power and the mysterious technology he has access to but which he did not create, a familiar figurehead in the age of disinformation but placed in a film which has little profound to say about it other than the affirmation that empathy should be considered an advanced evolutionary trait, tiptoeing around irate studio stakeholders rather than being boldly resolute.
With guns and shouting more prevalent than wonder, what exists behind the lies, obfuscations and cover-ups is a series of events lifted directly from episodes of The X-Files, both in broad themes and in the specifics of Conduit, Fallen Angel, Paper Clip, Nisei, War of the Coprophages and Pusher, the spontaneous formation of crop circles as pointless here as in the embarrassing Gender Bender, the revelations of Disclosure Day pulled from a rucksack of hard drives and printed documents “from 1947 to now” but the finale composed of “archive footage” of strange encounters from Roswell onwards which might have been pulled from YouTube UFO channels even as it parallels the aftermath of the Capricorn One mission.
The “masking images” of the visitors as they pose as animals rendered and animated so poorly that they call themselves out as artificial constructs with no indication that their obvious fakery was intentional, the witnesses to the titular moment staring wide-eyed and slack-jawed, awed and overwhelmed as they catch up to where the audience came into the film, already behind those well-versed in the background of the material, Disclosure Day is empty spectacle which is never brave enough to dare, a smug and superficial box ticking exercise by both Spielberg and Koepp squandered on a damp squib of a finale not even leavened by stunning visuals.
Disclosure Day is on general release and also screening in IMAX now
