Spielberg. The name is synonymous with cinema. From Jaws in the 70’s to E.T. in the 80’s, Jurassic Park in the 90’s, Minority Report in 2002 and Bridge of Spies in 2015 with his West Side Story remake in the 2020’s, Spielberg has dominated the silver screen for fifty years. With this comes not only fandom but high expectations of an auteur who is still at the top of his game. With an incredibly intriguing premise, Disclosure Day is a mixture of heart and empathy but also unfinished ideas and themes left unexplored.   

 

Disclosure Day follows ex-con hacker Daniel Kellner and Kansas City meteorologist Margaret Fairchild as they go on the run from a shadowy government shadow agency, WARDEX. After Daniel steals a device containing proof of a five-decade alien cover-up, and Margaret spontaneously awakens with telepathic abilities, both become targets for a desperate conspiracy determined to manage the terrifying truth.

Spielberg holds the human heart at the centre of every story that he tells. Whether it's humans escaping from dinosaurs, a childs empathy for an alien creature, or trying to bring a lost son home from war, this dominates his storytelling. And you will find that here in Disclosure Day but not quite as fully developed or as gut punching as in most of his other work. 

 

This also goes for the big themes at play here too - faith and science, deities and humanity. All greatly proposed ideas to play with and explore but Spielberg doesn’t dive as deep as you’d expect him to do as witnessed by his previous work. 

 

The action set pieces are a little mixed as well. There’s a sequence where Daniel is trying to evade WARDEX agents and is running crouched down by what could generously be called a fence (it’s a couple of planks with enough space to see an escaping perp). All these highly trained and deadly agents don’t see him and he makes his escape. It just doesn’t quite make sense. But then Daniel and Margaret get their car caught in the side of a moving train that scene is pure Spielberg - utterly thrilling, heart in your mouth kinda moment. 

Josh O’Connor is incredible here as Daniel bringing humanity but an unswerving moral compass to proceedings too - no matter the cost. From his breakout role in The Crown to The History of Sound and Wake Up Dead Man - O’Connor is a star on the absolute rise.

With an incredibly intriguing premise, Disclosure Day is a mixture of heart and empathy but also unfinished ideas and themes left unexplored.