If you found out we weren’t alone, if someone showed you proved it to you, would that frighten you? This summer, the truth belongs to eight billion people. We are coming close to … DISCLOSURE DAY.
Releasing to theaters on Friday, June 12, Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment’s DISCLOSURE DAY from legendary filmmaker Steven Spielberg, is a fast-paced thriller that answers many questions while creating even more.
Releasing to theaters on Friday, June 12, Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment’s DISCLOSURE DAY from legendary filmmaker Steven Spielberg, is a fast-paced thriller that answers many questions while creating even more.
Created and directed by Steven Spielberg, the film stars SAG winner and Oscar® nominee Emily Blunt (Oppenheimer, A Quiet Place), Emmy and Golden Globe winner Josh O’Connor (Challengers, The Crown), Oscar® winner Colin Firth (The King’s Speech, Kingsman franchise), Eve Hewson (Bad Sisters, The Perfect Couple) and two-time Oscar® nominee Colman Domingo (Sing Sing, Rustin).
Created and directed by Steven Spielberg, the film stars SAG winner and Oscar® nominee Emily Blunt (Oppenheimer, A Quiet Place), Emmy and Golden Globe winner Josh O’Connor (Challengers, The Crown), Oscar® winner Colin Firth (The King’s Speech, Kingsman franchise), Eve Hewson (Bad Sisters, The Perfect Couple) and two-time Oscar® nominee Colman Domingo (Sing Sing, Rustin).
About DISCLOSURE DAY
Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt) is a television journalist who does the weather for a local Kansas City station and is ready for new and better opportunities in her field. Dr. Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor) is a cybersecurity expert for WARDEX, a shadowy agency within the military industrial complex that safeguards evidence about alien visitation dating back to the Roswell incident of 1947.
Margaret and Daniel each share a special connection to the secret history held under WARDEX’s command, but their recollection of that history is fuzzy, and what they do remember they do not understand. To decipher their cryptic pasts so they can properly act on the secrets they hold, Margaret and Daniel must trust the help of peculiar allies with their own agendas while also evading powerful forces determined to stop them by any means necessary.
Since the release of “E.T., the Extraterrestrial” and “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” Steven Spielberg established himself as a skillful storyteller of human interactions with aliens. When DISCLOSURE DAY was announced, people began wondering whether it was a sequel to either of those films. This is not that. According to the production notes this film is, “not a sequel to CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, (sorry Internet).”
Whatever the production company’s intentions, DISCLOSURE DAY has many interesting coincidences, including the release date being a month since the Pentagon’s release of two massive tranches of declassified UFO files, which are now officially referred to as Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPs). The other is the name of the shadowy agency WARDEX, an acronym for “Waived Reporting, Development and Extraction.” “Waived reporting” is a term for government-affiliated agents or groups that are not required to submit data, documents, or any kind of accountability reporting to a regulatory agency.
It sounds like a given to say the production values of DISCLOSURE DAY are stellar. After all, we are talking about Spielberg.
Story wise, this film does not begin with an average family eating supper while discussing their day before the aliens impact their lives.
Instead, this film introduces meteorologist Margaret Fairchild (Blunt) giving the local weather report and suddenly speaking in a click language similar to the Hadzabe and San (Bushmen) tribes of Southern Africa before passing out. At that point, the story goes into high gear, switching to Daniel Kellner (O’Connor) who holds a PhD in cybersecurity and works for WARDEX, facing some shadowy WARDEX thugs who know Daniel has stolen some secret digital files as well as an unusual artifact and threaten his girlfriend Jane Blankenship (Hewson) unless he returns them. Daniel and Jane are taken to Noah Scanlon (Firth) who heads up WARDEX. After more threats, they escape and start running to an unknown location headed by a group of former WARDEX employees who believe that people have the right to know about the seven-decade cover-up and plan to release classified WARDEX data and video files. Moving forward, the story does not allow the characters—nor audiences—a moment to relax. This is a thriller, with many intense scenes, causing several audience members in my screening to call out, “Move!” “What is he doing?” “Look out!!”
The acting is amazing. Emily Blunt plays Margaret Fairchild as a confident woman with plans for her future and the idea of how to fulfil those plans, until she is thrown into extraordinary circumstances with no idea how to deal with them. She worked with a dialect coach to learn how to speak Korean and Russian. She worked with Spielberg and the sound designer to invent an alien language. Josh O’Connor played Daniel Kellner as a typical mathematical genius who is determined to overcome the WARDEX bad guys, but doesn’t quite know how to do that. Eve Hewson as Daniels girlfriend Jane Blankenship delivers a compelling performance that beautifully captures the tension between faith and humanity, grounding the film’s larger questions in a deeply personal journey. Colin Firth plays Noah Scanlon, the longtime head of WARDEX with the “I know what is best for the world” attitude of a dictator, not caring whether who might be harmed in the process until…
It seems redundant to say the film is visually amazing…after all, it’s a Spielberg film. The cinematography, the lighting, the settings, the costumes, and even the special effects, come together to make it captivating. Just a heads up: keep an eye out for some Easter Eggs throughout the film. Just because the film is not a sequel doesn’t mean a few references to those film don’t sneak into DISCLOSURE DAY in a thoroughly delightful way.
It almost goes without saying that if it’s a Spielberg film, John Williams is the composer. The recipient of 54 Oscar nominations and winner of five (Fiddler on the Roof, Jaws, Star Wars, E.T. the Extraterrestrial, Schindler’s List), 94-year-old Williams also scored Close of the Encounters of the Third Kind, memorable for its iconic five-note tonal phrase used to communicate with the aliens. In DISCLOSURE DAY, Williams’ music underscores, rather than drives, the film.
Unlike Spielberg’s other alien classics, DISCLOSURE DAY is not for young children. With a runtime of 2 hours and 25 minutes, it is rated PG-13 for action/violence, some bloody images, and strong language.
Watching DISCLOSURE DAY is a heart-pounding roller-coaster ride that answers many questions, while creating even more.
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