THB #843: Disclosure Day

“Can you drive a stick? I thought you said you could drive a stick.”

I really, really don’t want to write this review.

But I have to.

I love Spielberg. I haven’t loved every film. But I’ve been with him in some cases when others were not really into the films and I have loved some of the films like cinematic mother’s milk. One of our greatest directors with a very distinct voice and, to some degree, boundaries, though I am a huge fan of Munich, in which I think he pushes himself in ways he never really has, before or since.

Bur Disclosure Day is a disaster. Not a disaster movie. A disaster.

Weirdly, I found myself musing about how it was like Masters of the Universe, in that it was so well realized as a production and so well acted and so well directed. But it was so profoundly misconceived at the screenplay level.

Spielberg has a big ol’ story credit, so I don’t know how hard to swipe at David Koepp on the structure of the story here. Truth is, he has written 3 good movies in the last decade, all for Soderbergh. Everything else has been a hot mess. Inferno (the DaVinci Code three-quel), The Mummy (Tom Cruise disaster), Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (which has much the same problem as this movie), and Jurassic World: Rebirth, which took a clever idea and ground it into mush. He also wrote two films that went straight to streaming… Cold Storage, and one he also directed, You Should Have Left… neither of which I have ever seen.

I’m not going to get into story details here, though I must say, the most recent ads for the film now give away major “surprise” elements that are held into the 3rd act of the film.

But I am going to reference the overall idea. Disclosure Day is a kind of fast forward from Close Encounters of the Third Kind - not a direct sequel - assuming that everything in Close Encounters was then 100% covered up by the government, not to re-emerge until now.

The screenplay decides to start right in the middle of the story… the lead male, Dr. Daniel Kellner, played by a miscast Josh O’Connor, is already on the run with government secrets. The movie doesn’t want to tell us what’s happening and keeps holding us off by using the person of Kellner’s girlfriend, Jane Blankenship, played bu Eve Hewson. He doesn’t want to tell her, but we won’t know what he knows until he tells her.

Meanwhile, we get to hang out with wacky sex bomb weather woman, Margaret Fairchild, played by Emily Blunt, who in her 40s is playing her second character in the last year in a push-up bra and tight clothes (Smashing Machine), which is s surprising turn for her. (Note: No one funnier or sexier than Emily Blunt… but I don’t ever remember her leading with that in the last 20 years of her career.) She has a wacky sidekick in boyfriend Jackson (Wyatt Russell), who gives the movie a little comic relief, which you can hear the audience grasping for as it happens.

Like Close Encounters, both individuals, unconnected, seem to be connecting in ways they don’t understand and are both headed in a direction.

The movie’s villain, Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth), is pursuing Kellner and will quickly add Ms. Fairchild to his list. I honestly don’t remember how clear the movie is about it being connected to alien life in the 1st act, but we know from the first scene that there is an alien device that is a weapon of amazing and somewhat unclear power… if you handle if without the protection of a glove.

The movie’s magical, uh, good guy, Hugo Wakefield - whose names seems to suggest that the role was not written for a Black actor, but happened to become Black when they though of the great Colman Domingo for the role - is where our heroes are headed, even if they don’t know where he is or, in one case, who he is.

And this is where most of the problem with the film is. Because somehow, even without taking the time to establish the story of Dr. Kellner’s work betrayal, the movie is about 1 hour and 45 minutes of chase in a 2 hour 20 minute movie. And the chase just isn’t all that interesting. It’s not bad… but it’s not terribly memorable either and its filled with uninspired escapes.

We all know where the movie is going from watching the trailer.

But what is so very wrong with the movie is laid out by Spielberg himself in the final trailer (below). He actually appears in and narrates the trailer itself. He says…

“How will disclosure change us? I believe for the better. It will remind us of our capacity for empathy. And that there is something bigger out there than just ourselves.”

The problem?

The movie does not deliver on that promise. Really, it doesn’t even try. It’s a chase movie. And the significance of disclosure, aside from a lot of gaping faces in the 3rd act, is really minimized by how little it explores beyond the disclosure itself.

And what is so frustrating is that the high-quality filmmaking and cast makes it clear that this is exactly what the film should have been about. But it’s not.

Did Mr. Spielberg miss Men in Black? He exec produced it. Will Smith alone made most of what Disclosure Day is positively regressive. How do you go back to this after Will has punched aliens in the face (closed fist)… 29 YEARS AGO?!?!?!

Part of me was actually hoping that ET would show up.

I truly try not to demand that filmmakers make their movies in the image of what I might think was better. My role, professionally at least, is not only to have an opinion, but to really try to understand why each filmmaker made the movie they made and why they made it, not just whether I agree with their choices.

But… the backstory of Dr. David Kellner is pretty much a must-have because as an audience, we need a character who comes to an awareness of why he must risk everything to disclose the secrets this film positions as factual. But it doesn’t exist. We start with him after his revelation. The thinking behind not having this probably came from 2 ideas… 1, wanting a clever way to open a movie, from a running start… and 2, third act twists that they wanted to hide, but really could have kept secret without changing much.

The chase is, as always, top notch filmmaking by Spielberg and his team. (Janusz Kaminski makes himself known from the very first scene with his signature blue flares in an interior.) But in a sane world, it is one act of a three act movie… mostly because we know where it is going. Not in detail (though that 2nd trailer is loaded with spoilers), but overall.

The screenplay tries to have it both ways and sadly, fails. For instance, the nun character, played by Elizabeth Marvel (no relation to the brand), speaks to her perspective on other non-earth beings from her place as a religious thinker. Okay. But remember… “How will disclosure change us?” CHANGE. She never gets to express that in any way.

Spielberg has the right question. So why isn’t there any kind of answer in the movie?

The 2 lead characters are deeply affected by “the truth.” But because they are the 2 lead characters and in no way embody the idea of the average human, even the brief glimpse at how they are changed doesn’t really speak to the Spielberg question.

Josh O’Connor, by the way, is miscast not because he’s not a terrific actor, but because he is not a big personality. I recognize that the screenplay wants him to be a regular guy. But O’Connor plays him as a cipher for most of the film. I don’t think Tom Cruise was the right guy for the lead here, but this movie makes clear how important he is to Spielberg’s War of the Worlds. His charisma and quirks fill certain holes. That’s not O’Connor’s acting style. Maybe someone like Jeremy Allen White or Michael Fassbender or Sebastian Stan or, dare I say it, Chalamet, would have filled the space in a more interesting way. The role needed a little crazy.

Emily Blunt brings that crazy. She is the one who is put through the paces or being almost possessed by whatever it is that is possessing her (no spoilers).

The funny thing is, I am avoiding spoilers, but damned if the movie can make up its mind along the way. It is all over the place. There are set pieces that I see the attraction of… but they all seem to be coming from different movies. And even within them, they often don’t seem to make a ton of sense.

This is a movie in which the heroes are constantly hiding out… but can never hide out.

This is a movie in which we find out how the 2 heroes are connected, but still don’t really know how and why and what the hell happened. It’s not completely ignored, but the half-answers are really unsatisfying.

This is a movie in which people act with absolutism and a willing to do anything, no matter how horrible… and then just will walk away, This happens more than once.

E.T. presents himself in that movie about 20 minutes in. And then we get a full hour of the family being changed and reminded of their capacity for empathy before the bad guys put E.T. on the surgical table.

I ain’t asking for a remake. But THAT is what Spielberg is. He is an empathy filmmaker. He puts real humans in crazy places and examines their humanity. Even in the purest of his action films, the Indiana Jones films, Marion and then his father were absolutely critical to the overall pictures. I love Temple of Doom, but many don’t… and I think a lot of it is because Willie is not as warm a character as Marion.

The weakest part of E.T. is the scientists. They are needed to present a challenge. But they are not compelling because we don’t care about what they are doing.

And sadly, Disclosure Day is like that worst part of E.T.

(Worth noting that Keopp wrote both terrible Indiana Jones entries. And not unlike this movie, Dial of Destiny dies, in part, because it misses that Indy is now old and his relationship with Marion is what we all want from the film.)

Yes, there are beats and moments that are interesting. As noted before, Spielberg can still shoot a movie beautifully. And what a great group of actors. Every one of them playing at the top of their game. Colman Domingo doesn’t belong playing Morgan Freeman… but damn it, he was the best Morgan Freeman since Morgan Freeman (who is still alive and working). Blunt was flawless, playing all kinds of crazy stuff, including multiple languages, flawlessly. And we all now know that Colin Firth looks freakish with blue eyes, but Eva Hewson looks great in any eye color at all.

I’ve never had the experience in a Spielberg movie where I kept reaching for my TV clicker to fast forward… because this movie just wouldn’t get to the point. And it turned out that it never gets to the point… or past the very first manifestation of the point… because it felt like the point was beyond the revelation of a real life alien!!!

It wasn’t.

I really hope Spielberg makes that western he keeps hinting at. And I hope he gets Kasdan and David Ayer and Ari Aster and Alex Garland to somehow throw all their ideas into it.

In the meantime, Toy Story will be invaded by a little green mechanical woman next weekend and it will be like this never happened. And Spielberg’s greatness will be right here.

Until tomorrow…