There is the concept that says everything in life goes in cycles. Some of those cycles are larger than others, but not in that “those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it” way. This is more just about things coming and going through our lives like the tides, and they don’t always have the same time frame to complete themselves. For Steven Spielberg, that cycle seems to deal with life on other planets, and that cycle has returned to us with Disclosure Day.
Emily Blunt plays Margaret Fairchild, a local Kansas City meteorologist that finds herself able to read people’s thoughts and speak multiple languages all of a sudden one morning, causing her to appear as if her mental state is all over the place, especially with her boyfriend, Jackson (Wyatt Russell). At the same time, Dr. Daniel Keller (Josh O’Connor) is on the run from an evil corporation headed by Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth) after stealing a LOT of information that “the public needs to know about”. With his girlfriend, Jane (Eve Hewson), by his side and under the guidance of Hugo Wakefield (Coleman Domingo), their paths and destinies work towards each other in ways neither one of them could anticipate, not to mention the rest of us.
On the surface, this seems to call back a lot to Close Encounters of the Third Kind (and I won’t lie and tell you I am not motivated to go back and re-visit it later this week), but it is SO much more than that. To say that Disclosure Day is a “slow burn” is an understatement at a run time of almost two and a half hours, but honestly that didn’t bother me at all. This is more of a dramatic thriller with action elements to it, and the journey is just as important as the destination here. Spielberg and screenwriter David Koepp turn the intensity up to eleven by putting the stakes that both of the leads are up against right off the bat instead of at a crescendo from a lull (granted, this is more for Kellner than it is for Fairchild, but her character arc catches up QUICKLY when it gets going), and that works REALLY well for me. There are a few gaps in the story here and there, but that didn’t take me out of things as they progressed. I have no doubt that Spielberg has a HUGE director’s cut that will grace us with its presence down the road, but until then I am good here.
There of course are some heavy hitters as Spielberg tends to go with in his films, but the lesser known actors are the ones I want to highlight here. O’Connor’s star continues to rise as the man on the run who still has so much to learn, while Hewson is absolutely perfect as the girl with a past that plays more into the core plot than expected. And with all this, there is one performance that needs to be recognized in an age where even extended cameos can find themselves on the Academy’s radar and it belongs to Courtney Grace. Her role dominates the last twenty minutes of this film with absolute precision in a way that hit me like a Mack Truck (I really don’t want to go into it any more than that because if I did, MAJOR spoilers would find themselves into this review). Many would recognize her as the nurse at the hospital in the final season of Stranger Things, but this is a portrayal that needs to be front an center of her demo reel going forward to force casting agents and producers to sit up and notice.
Disclosure Day exceeded my expectations, and even though said expectations set the bar fairly low given the last few years of Spielberg’s resume and as good as 2022’s The Fabelmans was, the former does something the latter simply does not. While his previous effort is fantastic, I felt it relied on that final shot to really make the rest of everything work, especially for those that may not know much about the director’s story that it was based on. This film actually sticks the landing long before the credits roll while constantly keeping its core story alive and not cooling off until the lights come up. This is honestly his best back-to-back work since Bridge of Spies and The BFG a decade ago and proves that he’s still got it.