“Disclosure Day” invites you into its world with a kick to the face. Or maybe it’s a stomp.
Whatever it is, this opening sequence, in a garish professional wrestling ring, is bound to wake you up and make you wonder, first, if you’re in the right movie and, second, if Steven Spielberg has lost it.
Don’t worry, he hasn’t. In fact, he’s on fire, making a movie that feels like the kinds he used to churn out regularly in the first half of his career.
The camera soon finds the one person in this frenzied crowd who is as worried and befuddled as we are: His name is Daniel Kellner, he’s played by Josh O’Connor (the perfect “grown-up” Spielberg kid), and he is already in the middle of his adventure.
The suits have found him, put a gun to his side and confiscated his backpack. A girl, Jane, has been taken hostage. And we as the audience are on a nonstop ride of discovery, wonder and thrills and, thankfully, no more wrestling.
“Disclosure Day” is a classic, big-hearted Spielberg adventure through and through, with ordinary people rebelling against shadowy secret keepers in the name of the truth.
Indiana Jones wanted antiquities in museums for all to see. Daniel, and the team of people who convinced him to steal files from a private cybersecurity firm, want the world to know that there is life elsewhere and they have made contact.
Nearly 50 years after Roy Neary’s close encounter, Spielberg isn’t so much asking questions this time: He’s blowing the whistle, in classic paranoid conspiracy thriller style (although this is decidedly more romantic than ’70s-era cynical), with a turtlenecked Colin Firth as the malevolent leader of WARDEX, the company seeking to keep this information under wraps.
The story finds us in a time and place that looks like our own. Attention is on a global conflict brewing — there are passing references to World War III, and some hysterical hoarding at the local gas station — but on a certain level everyone is going about business as usual, including local Kansas City, Missouri, broadcaster Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt), who is trapped in weather girl mode but dreams of reporting serious news.
She’s a little flighty and unsettled, we’re told, but then things start getting deeply weird: Suddenly she’s slipping in and out of different languages, knowing extremely personal details about strangers, and divining all sorts of information about Daniel and the other players in this operation.
Margaret and Daniel are clearly on a path toward one another, with the men in the black SUVs on their tail.
As in many Spielberg films there is a spiritual element to the proceedings of “Disclosure Day,” with the believers, the skeptics and the scared all crashing into one another and slouching toward revelation. Daniel’s girlfriend, Jane (an excellent Eve Hewson), is a former nun who has questions and concerns about the utility of the information.
And the maestro of this operation is Hugo, a former WARDEX employee, played by Colman Domingo. He is coaching his unlikely heroes through the situation while he oversees what appears to be the construction of a set. It always comes back to movies, doesn’t it?
Many of the greatest pleasures of “Disclosure Day” are wrapped up in our own Spielberg literacy.
The movie language is unmistakably his, with shadows and lens flare and smoke, blown-out lights and wet streets and all. His set pieces are old fashioned, tactile and delightfully sane, from car chases to a thrilling sequence involving a train. And the John Williams score is the kind that may produce goose bumps.
Now, did “Disclosure Day” make me believe in aliens or want to seek out truther documentaries about “unidentified anomalous phenomena”? Mostly, it just reminded me that I believe in Spielberg. Always have.
Disclosure Day
Three stars out of four