​Home again: Spielberg returns to sci-fi spectacle with ‘Disclosure Day’

By Greg Carlson

Steven Spielberg, who will turn 80 this December, returns to the subject of aliens among us in “Disclosure Day,” his first feature since “The Fabelmans” in 2022. Now closer to the end than the beginning of one of the greatest and most storied Hollywood filmmaking careers, the master director continues to inspire new generations of wannabe moguls, even though a strong argument can be made that the run from theatrical debut “The Sugarland Express” in 1974 to “Saving Private Ryan” in 1998 is significantly more impactful and assuredly more seismic than the respectable set of 17 movies completed since the turn of the century.

Fans hoping for something on par with “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” should temper expectations. “Disclosure Day” lands somewhere closer to “War of the Worlds” than the territory of undisputed masterpiece status. Spielberg entrusted the screenwriting duties for his original story to longtime collaborator David Koepp, who reportedly toiled through an arduous gauntlet of 42 drafts. The result juggles an ensemble of top-level talents playing characters who plan to expose the long-guarded and classified secret of intelligent life visiting the planet versus the boss of a shadow-ops NGO who stands in their way.

Spielberg and Koepp employ a structure that principally cross-cuts among and between a quadrilateral. At the four vertices are Kansas City TV meteorologist Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt), cybersecurity genius turned whistleblower Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor), truth advocate Hugo Wakefield (Colman Domingo), and initially antagonistic WARDEX head honcho Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth). The mechanics of the story link each person to the next in a series of increasingly tense escalations leading up to the inevitable revelation promised by the title.

Outside the primary quartet, Eve Hewson makes an impression — until she doesn’t. As an ex-nun returned to secular life, Hewson’s Jane Blankenship accompanies boyfriend Kellner and addresses matters divine, injecting the movie with some very basic theological and metaphysical contemplation of whether the confirmation of life beyond the reaches of our solar system affirms or collapses the possibility of God’s existence. Weirdly, following the set-up of a clever hand-off masterminded by Daniel, Jane essentially vanishes from the story until the plot necessitates her convenient return.

As a top-tier manipulator, Spielberg’s gift for staging both action and dialogue-free pure cinema links him as much as ever to Alfred Hitchcock. “Disclosure Day” pays homage to the Master of Suspense in several recognizable tributes. Cinephiles will recognize a small nod to “Psycho” and a much bigger one to “North by Northwest,” and Spielberg can’t resist the magnetic pull of the MacGuffin, manifesting in both Kellner’s pilfered data drives and, more dramatically, the unstable alien “diving” device tech that serves otherworldly Swiss Army knife functions ranging from invisibility cloaking to body control and telepathic communication.

Given the range of critical reactions, the jury is certainly out when it comes to the question of the movie’s ultimate satisfaction. To my own eye, “Disclosure Day” verges on taking itself a little too seriously, as if Spielberg fights strenuously against the full-on popcorn allure of Big Dumb Fun when he should be leaning into the spirit of the ridiculous. So many scenes unfold in cars one has to fight off carbon dioxide headaches. But thanks to the team of stalwart, longtime allies (glorious John Williams and Janusz Kamiński at the top of the list), “Disclosure Day” indicates that after more than half a century, Steven Spielberg still embraces optimism when more of it is sorely needed.