Five decades on from Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and visionary director Steven Spielberg returns with his latest sci-fi adventure. Unfortunately, if his Disclosure Day is anything to go by, then it seems as though the well has run well and truly dry. The man who once made us believe that dinosaurs could walk the Earth struggles to do the same for a garden-variety fox. Let alone aliens.
The little green grey men are real, and Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor) has evidence. He’s ready to share it with the world, but first he needs to get away from scary government stooge Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth), who’s set on silencing the rogue nerd before he can blow the whistle. With Daniel on the run with girlfriend Jane (Eve Hewson), matters become further complicated when local weather-lady Margaret (Emily Blunt) begins babbling in guttural clicks like a parseltongue version of that one scene from Bruce Almighty.
The comparison is even more apt than that. Scanlon, you see, fears that the confirmation of alien life will send the world as we know it into an existential panic, upending all the major religions. Not that the world is doing particularly well in the first place. On the brink of World War III, Kellner and Margaret’s big day comes with all the major nations teetering on the precipice. Will their news bring the world together, or simply push it over the edge?
Spielberg, ever the sentimental, has his ideas, but there’s nearly two hours of rote chase film to get through first. Part Paul and part Watchmen, the story barrels from one low-effort set piece to the next, from dingy farmhouses to even dingier motel bathrooms. The urgency it does muster is undermined by the visuals, particularly during a climactic chase, which can’t even spare the pixels for a convincingly real-looking car. Rather that than the wildlife, which seems to have been dredged up from the same uncanny valley his alien lifeforms hail from.
O’Connor, Blunt and Hewson do their best with what they’ve been dealt, but David Koepp’s screenplay does nobody any favours. At least Firth has the good grace to ham it up – everyone else (including a wildly underused Colman Domingo) simply powers through with a faintly embarrassed expression upon their miscast faces. There’s no subtlety to be found here, and the script seems to have been written to best cater to those not even paying attention, largely relying on an exposition-barfing phone call from Blunt or Domingo whenever the characters get stuck. It’s little wonder poor Wyatt Russell looks so baffled the whole time.
Disclosure Day is a calamity, made all the more disappointing for the calibre of talent involved. Spielberg’s message is well-intentioned and necessary but the delivery is so far off the mark it’s practically on another planet.
DISCLOSURE DAY is out in cinemas now.
