In the ideal, hypothetical, sci-fi-inflected, mind-bending thriller by Steven Spielberg – I’m sure that describes at least a couple films in his filmography – you come in with only a taste of what the movie is actually about. The pleasure is discovering the secrets the film holds, experiencing the wonder as these secrets are disclosed, if you will, over the course of the narrative.
Disclosure Day fits that ideal description to a T. The very title indicates the reveal of information that had not yet been public. And the movie sets up the conditions for this exquisite pleasure of discovery, with an opening section in which shady organisations are seeking a mysterious handheld device from a man on the run, and a Kansas City weather woman starts speaking in tongues during a broadcast. What exactly is it that’s going to be disclosed?
From there, the film can’t really figure out what it’s about. Or rather, it’s about a lot of different things that don’t totally go together. And though we won’t disclose here the big thing that’s going to be disclosed, viewers will have good precedent from Spielberg’s oeuvre if they want to make educated guesses. The trouble with the promise of a big reveal is that it can end up disappointing. And as presented here, even a bit hokey.
Josh O’Connor plays Daniel Kellner, a cybersecurity specialist who we meet during a UFC fight, looking like the person least likely to be there. Turns out this is to be an exchange, a backpack for the safe return of his kidnapped girlfriend Jane (Eve Hewson). But Daniel’s not giving up the goods without some leverage, and that turns out to be a silver cylinder approximately the size of a carrot, which Daniel waves menacingly at a group of operatives led by the effete Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth), allowing him to leave with both the girl and the backpack.
Meanwhile, meteorologist Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt) is getting itchy feet again, eager to move on from Kansas City even though her boyfriend Jackson (Wyatt Russell) feels settled there. She’s a popular local celebrity with her trademark “weather shimmy,” but there’s a more serious journalist just screaming to get out. Margaret will have a platform she never expected when she has a strange interaction with a cardinal that flies in through her apartment window, and suddenly can read people’s thoughts. During a read of the weather, she starts making clicking sounds that resemble those of an African bushman, but are decidedly not that. (That they leave the camera on this woman for about 20 seconds, when there is ample evidence she’s having some kind of medical episode, is just one of the ways you have to suspend disbelief in Disclosure Day.)
The carrot-sized device, the clicking language and the odd communion with animals are all related to each other, sort of. There’s even a religious component we haven’t yet mentioned, as Hewson’s Jane is a former nun. But in the context of David Koepp’s script, they feel more like a whole season of Lost crammed into one movie. That is to say that they are presented to us as mysteries that would keep a viewer returning to a TV show over a series of weeks and months to figure out how they all come together, and in the case of that 20-year-old show in particular, without a satisfying reward at the end. If you are looking for an “A-ha!” moment in which these things feel intrinsically related to the central secret, you’ll be shit out of luck.
This is not to say the movie is confusing. This is a clean, propulsive film that is never boring. It benefits from performances that range from decent to quite good, and included in that group is one central actor we haven’t mentioned yet, Colman Domingo as Firth’s more benevolent equivalent, who is looking to disclose the secret information rather than keeping it shrouded. In all the technical aspects that go into making a film, including cameras that swoop compellingly through the scene, this is Spielberg close to the peak of his powers, even as he celebrates his 80th birthday later this year.
It’s just that there have been expectations set for blown minds, and the central secret of Disclosure Day is very much going back to a familiar well for Hollywood’s most successful director. What’s more, there’s a sort of ham-handed social messaging that is usually welcome from someone like Spielberg, especially if you are a progressive viewer, that here just feels a bit strained. The film is set against a backdrop of international tensions, with nothing less than World War III on the horizon, and Disclosure Day makes shallow gestures toward attempting to understand each other rather than declare war on one another. Again, good on the film for having a conscience, but does it have to feel so perfunctory? There’s a similarly weak play to make heroes out of the world’s embattled journalists.
None of this would be as troubling if the central reveal were more exciting. It’s certainly a big enough reveal for a title like Disclosure Day, and indeed, such a reveal would have a destabilising effect on the world as we know it. But as you’re watching a competently executed finale in which the world learns what it learns, that ends on an eye-rolling note, it awakens the cynic in a viewer. It should awaken the child struck with wonder, which has always been Spielberg’s wheelhouse. If Disclosure Day is trying to connect to the world we live in right now, it fails to properly identify that only half the world would ever take it at face value if seeing something like this. To everyone else, it’s fake news, and so, in some ways, is this movie.
Disclosure Day opened yesterday in Australian cinemas.