The successful summer season has initiated seriously with the theatrical release of Disclosure Daydirector Steven Spielberg’s long-awaited return to his “aliens are among us” sci-fi roots. Verdict: There’s not much fresh or original here as far as movies about aliens go, but it’s a fast-paced movie with a luminous performance from Emily Blunt that won’t fail to entertain.
(Some spoilers below, but no major reveals.)
The first half of the film is essentially a political thriller, with overtones of the 1974s. The parallax view and similar films, as global tensions have the world on the brink of World War III. A cybersecurity specialist named Daniel (Josh O’Connor) has stolen a piece of alien technology and highly classified files from his employer, Wardex Corporation, a top-secret extension of the US government run by Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth). Scanlon makes Daniel leave while holding his girlfriend Jane (Eve Hewson) hostage. In the exchange, Daniel betrays them and escapes with Jane, and the two flee as Scanlon declares Daniel a traitor.
Meanwhile, Kansas City TV meteorologist Margaret (Emily Blunt) is having breakfast with her boyfriend Jackson (Wyatt Russell) when a cardinal flies in through the window and looks her in the eyes before flying away. Margaret resumes her conversation with Jackson, only in Russian, a language she never learned. On his way to work, he discovers that he can read other people’s thoughts and feelings and converse in their native languages. And then, in a pivotal moment that appears in every trailer, Margaret begins her live weather report, only to lapse into strange language on air. That moment immediately goes viral.
This catches the attention of Scanlon, as well as Hugo Wakefield (Colman Domingo), Scanlon’s Wardex colleague. Hugo is the one who pulls the strings behind the scenes to organize Daniel’s theft of the top secret materials. Its goal: to reveal to the world its contents, which detail encounters between humans and aliens over the past 80 years. Scanlon is equally intent on preventing the truth from coming to light, and it becomes a high-stakes race against time as Daniel and Margaret try to evade his henchmen and find each other.
A change of vibe
I won’t say much about the last 30 minutes, because that would be giving too much away (although the final trailer gave some pretty strong hints). Suffice it to say that there is a pronounced shift in vibe toward the mystical as the plot threads converge. In Spielberg’s capable hands, it works, although some have criticized the CGI, particularly for the animals. Given what those animals represent, I think it was the right decision to make them seem otherworldly, as if they were stepping out of a storybook right into our darkest, grittiest world.
