(courtesy IMP Awards)
As mysteries go, and yes, the world appears to be full of them contrary to all appearances, the huge question about whether aliens exists, and even more pertinently in the case of this review, whether they have visited us, is a BIG one.
People debate it endlessly, with ufologists as they are called speculating about which aliens have come where and what they’ve known and why; the most famous, or infamous, depending on your appetite for urban myths and conspiracy theories is that of Roswell, New Mexico where, in 1947, aliens supposedly came to earth and crashlanded, which frankly does not say much about the quality of their space craft design and builds.
Alien product quality aside, there are a good many people who believe extraterrestrials came to earth then, part of a pattern of alien visitation possibly stretching back millennia, and while other more sober souls argue that errant weather balloons and experimental aircraft are to blame, the believers keep believing including one Steven Spielberg who has given us Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T. and the TV series Falling Skies and who now gives a definitive treatise on the existence and visitational habits of aliens in Disclosure Day.
A two-and-a-half-hour epic, Disclosure Day is the sort of film that signals that it BELIEVES from the word go and that, while some dissenting voices argue that knowing that aliens are among us could be a very bad thing for humanity (what about the religious people it cries!), knowing the truth about the ultimate migrants here on earth can only be a good thing.
Quite whether that is a good thing or not is never really given time to come properly before a jury with the film neatly sidestepping what comes after in the most fiendishly abrupt of ways, but the movie throws around ideas about whether it is good or bad like confetti being flung at a rabid honeyeater’s wedding.
One of the downsides about all the big ideas that Spielberg and writer David Koepp serve us up with a frenzy of earnest good intention is that none of them really stick; Disclosure Day wants to be a portentous, thoughtfully intense film and spends some time, not enough alas, setting them up as things we should cogitate on.
And while some of these ideas are intriguing such as is the government, and it’s the U.S. government of course because apparently aliens only drop in on a very geographically discrete part of the North American continent, covering up a vast alien conspiracy and if they are why, and would Joe Schmo in the street knowing about it upend civilisation as we know it, the film rarely pauses for breath to even think about these things in passing.
That’s fair enough in one sense if you consider that Disclosure Day largely exists as a big good versus evil chase film, one where the true believers, in this case cybersecurity expert Dr Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor) and meteorologist and former journalist Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt), backed by whistle blower of sorts, Hugo Wakefield (Colman Domingo) are continuously pursued by the Wardex Corporation, a secret arm of the U.S. government, represented with cartoonish intensity by Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth).
As chase films go, the narrative here is pretty straightforward, almost to the point of numbing, if invigorating to watch, cliche, with the good guys and gals about to killed/captured/interrogated/tortured depending on the moment and the bad guys and gals armed with all kinds of retrofitted alien tech at their disposal which they use with almost creepily invasive intent.
It’s absolutely fun to watch and there are even some intense moments which, sweep you as all high octane does, into a state of unquestioning euphoria, and you will thrill to the idea that two people, Margaret and Daniel, who have only just awoken to the fact that they KNOW stuff about aliens in a way no one else does, are in such danger and that they must escape because right rather than might is on their side.
But as some point, things happen where you begin to realise that Disclosure Day is so addicted to a fairly cliched hunt that it careens and ducks and weaves through plot holes and glitches in actual human behaviour so big that an alien spaceship could no doubt fly through and not ding the body work (crashes though; yeah, not so good, again, with them).
At the same time this is happening, you realise that all those cool ideas and philosophically huge questions aren’t getting any substantial airtime at all, and that while there are conversations in passing that talk about what it all could all mean when people find out that ALIENS ARE REAL, Disclosure Day doesn’t stand still long enough for it all to mean something.
Even the final act when the big reveal, and of course there is one – Disclosure Day is in love with all kinds of cliches and tropes and one of the biggest is that the truth will out – fills the airwaves of the world with revelatory information about our extraterrestrial visitors, falls flat because suddenly we are meant to believe that beneath all the running and chasing and ducking and diving that there are big dynamics at play.
It’s all a little bit too late alas, and it all feels a little too underdone to actually impact you in any sort of meaningful or lasting way.
As a long time Spielberg fan, Disclosure Day ended up being a major disappointment because it doesn’t say anything really new about aliens, it doesn’t say it well or with any originality and it brushes over huge things like the world being on the precipice of World War III because it believes, with the savage sincerity of the true believer, that having the truth out there will fix everything.
Perhaps it will, but Disclosure Day doesn’t make a strong case for it, and you are left at the end feeling buoyed by some well-executed if emotionally empty blockbuster action but ultimately disappointed that a film with such clearly big ideas and intentions ends up feeling very small and been-there-done-that.