Film review: Disclosure Day

It’s curious to get within touching distance of a new Steven Spielberg blockbuster and know so little about it, both in terms of plot and critical opinion. What we have had a lot of, however, are influencers dishing out sycophantic rave reviews and Mr Spielberg going on an absolute press offensive, seemingly refusing to say no to any interview going. Those aren’t omens for a great film, sadly, and so it proves. If only someone had said no to the director at some point.

He has generally great form when it comes to movies about little green men. Over the years he’s used extraterrestrials as a prism through which to explore everything from friendship and loneliness (E.T.) to the post-9/11 climate of fear (War Of The Worlds). That is ‘generally’ great, because he’s also been known to crowbar his interest into a beloved franchise with ridiculed results (Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull).

Now, with Disclosure Day, the director has focused on how the knowledge of alien life would impact a destabilised planet where war is a constant and governments suppress and control information. So far, so relevant.

So why, then, does Disclosure Day feel so half-baked and inconsequential? Considering the pedigree of the talent involved, both behind the camera and in front of it, the greatest mystery here is why it lacks anything approaching tension or depth or narrative intrigue. Even more fundamental than that, it doesn’t have a coherent plot.

Much of the blame for this should be laid at the door of the writing. David Koepp is a scribe with a mixed bag of a track record, illustrated by the fact he penned the screenplays for both the magnificent Jurassic Park and the abominable Jurassic World Rebirth. Here, he’s taken an original story from Spielberg and built it into a 145-minute conspiracy thriller/chase movie that neither thrills nor gets any momentum going. In fact, it feels like a first draft that no one got around to actually scrutinising.

That can be the only explanation for Disclosure Day’s sizeable flaws. It’s populated by characters that, aside from Emily Blunt’s weather reporter with mysterious abilities, we know little about and care even less for. They spout exposition that clangs like a crashed UFO, regularly jolting you out of proceedings (“History doesn’t have a reset key,” the nefarious Noah Scanlon, played by a woefully miscast Colin Firth, says at one point).

These characters, good and bad, are separated from one another, yet seem to have a sense of what their counterparts are doing and why, though no one has thought to let the audience in on the logic. We’re constantly building towards something, the Disclosure Day of the title, yet once it arrives, it won’t be gasps you’ll hear in the cinema, but a collective shrugging of shoulders.

There is an attempt at the profound, but it’s so hurried and late in the game you’re not sufficiently invested to feel its punch. Additionally, in a world in which empathy is a dwindling resource when it comes to human lives, the film’s attempt to tug at the heart strings feels naive.

The underwhelming nature of the ending might be less of a bitter pill if there was anything exciting on the journey towards it. Even in Spielberg’s ‘lesser’ works, there are moments of wonder that captivate and endure. Think the velociraptors in the long grass in The Lost World: Jurassic Park, or the cavalry charge of horses reaching the German trenches in War Horse, their riders having been mowed down by machine gun fire. There is nothing anywhere near as exciting or affecting here.

Instead, we get a set piece involving a train, the likes of which we’ve seen a hundred times before, and later, a sequence involving invisibility that’s just plain daft. Admittedly there are some clever shots, but that’s the very least we should be expecting.

Steven Spielberg’s return to this subject matter was undoubtedly an exciting prospect. One fears, however, that the warm waves of nostalgia that prospect elicited have distracted from the fact that if Disclosure Day had been made by someone else, it would be dismissed as the stuff of a bad sci-fi pilot.

As for the suggestions that this is Spielberg’s best film in 20 years - a period in which he made Lincoln, Bridge Of Spies, The Post and The Fabelmans - that’s just disingenuous. As are those calling this a ‘boomer blockbuster’, which is equal parts ignorant and ageist for suggesting this film’s lack of quality is down to it being made by a 79-year-old man and aimed at an ‘older’ audience.

Steven Spielberg is a master making the case for the big cinematic experience in an age when directors in their twenties are lighting up the box office with low budget movies (Obsession, Backrooms), and streaming platforms and prestige TV rule the roost. It’s with a heavy heart we disclose that the master has comprehensively failed in this instance. This is a film that’s confusingly plotted and emotionally hollow, and it’s not helpful to pretend otherwise.

Verdict: 2/5

Disclosure Day is out now

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