Dr. Daniel Kellner and his colleagues tried to “quietly quit” double-secret alien tech contractor Wardex, but the boss, Noah Scanlon was not having it—particularly not from an asset like Kellner. The scientist has a truly uncanny ability to analyze numbers. However, he and his fellow corporate dissidents, led by senior Wardex exec Hugo Wakefield, realized the public deserves to learn the truth about UAPs and alien biologics. In fact, Kellner was the one who stole the files for their planned document dump, so Scanlon kidnapped his girlfriend Jane Blankenship as leverage.
Yet, Kellner is more resourceful than he looks. He also has Kansas City weather teleprompter-reader Margaret Fairchild to warn him of any danger. They never met and have no idea who the other is. However, Fairchild just experienced a massive awakening of ESP powers that make Professor X look like a carnival fortune teller.
So, nothing totally unprecedented, right? What really stand out are the scenes of Scanlon “diving”’ into targeted minds. Essentially, through the use alien tech, he forges a predatory mental connection, for the sake of extracting information and even turning his victims into killers. These sequences even have a bit of a Scanners vibe, but that is not a bad thing.
Admittedly, Spielberg directs the heck out of a lot of scenes. The way he depicts Fairchild’s use of her new mystery powers is also dazzlingly cinematic. However, there is no big cosmic wonder. Ironically (given the subject matter), Disclosure Day feels weirdly small in scope. It is also somewhat anti-climatic and misleading. It promises to chronicle the sociological implications of big “D” disclosure, but it never gets that far. Instead, we get the highly conventional thrills of files uploading to satellite feeds.
Clearly, the cast was inspired by Spielberg. Josh O’Connor portrays Kellner as a twitchy oddball, who is still sympathetic in an underdog kind of way. Emily Blunt impresses with the boldness of Fairchild’s nervous breakdown. When you think about, most movie characters are unrealistically pragmatic when forced to become fugitives. In real life, a lot of people would similarly curl up into the fetal position. Likewise, Colin Firth’s Scanlon is a refreshingly complex villain and his portrayal is surprisingly physical.
Disclosure Day is the sort of film that you want to be better, because of the talent involved and the amount of good stuff that went into it. Again, the greatest shortcoming is Koepp’s pedestrian narrative. Spielberg and the cast did so much to elevate, it still kind of works as an alien conspiracy thriller, but everyone involved deserved a bigger, fresher, sharper script. It is a close call, but it is probably worth paying outside-of-New York ticket prices to see Spielberg in top form and back working in genre. Recommended with all those caveats, Disclosure Days opens everywhere with a movie screen this Friday (6/12).
