Disclosure Day, 2026.
Directed by Steven Spielberg.
Starring Emily Blunt, Josh O’Connor, Colin Firth, Eve Hewson, and Colman Domingo.
SYNOPSIS:
Disclosure Day didn’t quite do it for me, but if you enjoyed it, this 4K Ultra HD release is worth the purchase price. The film looks great, which isn’t a surprise since it just came out this year, and you get a nice, meaty 54-minute making-of courtesy of home video veteran Laurent Bouzereau.
I really wanted to like this one. As I’ve said before (probably too many times), I’m a Spielberg/Lucas kid. Their movies were the ones I really cut my teeth on when I was growing up in the 70s and 80s.
But, yeah, Disclosure Day doesn’t really hold together for me, mostly because the characters’ motivations are buried under a morass of vague government agency machinations, and the ending in particular doesn’t really suspend disbelief for me. (And, honestly, I was so done with the lens flares probably halfway through.)
I know, Spielberg is one of the masters of the deus ex machina, and when he’s done a great job of captivating me from the start, I can overlook those kinds of plot holes when the third act arrives and I’m swept up in the drama of “Oh my gosh, are our heroes really going to pull this one out?”
But he didn’t do that for me in Disclosure Day. If he did for you, like he did with my daughter, then that’s great. I’m happy for you, and you’ll probably want to snap up this 4K Ultra HD release of the film. I can only shrug and say, “To each, their own.”
This one stars Emily Blunt as meteorologist and newscaster Margaret Fairchild, who begins speaking in an alien language during a newscast. This comes on the heels of a geopolitical crisis that has the world on the brink of nuclear war and cybersecurity specialist Daniel Kellner’s (Josh O’Connor) theft of materials from a shadowy government contractor called Wardex.
Colin Firth plays Wardex CEO Noah Scanlon, who leads the pursuit of Daniel, which fails when the young man escapes with help from alien technology that was part of his thievery. However, Noah has access to the technology too, which enables him to telepathically see through other people’s eyes and control their bodies.
Daniel goes on the run with his girlfriend, Jane Blankenship (Eve Hewson), while Margaret defies her boyfriend Jackson (Wyatt Russell), who wants to get her committed to a mental health facility because of her seeming breakdown, and runs off following a psychic calling that leads her toward an unknown destination.
Yeah, there are shades of Close Encounters of the Third Kind here, and composer John Willliams’ score includes some cues from that iconic film’s music to drive the point home, but Disclosure Day didn’t manage to engage me at nearly one-hundredth of what Spielberg’s 1977 classic achieved, as far as I’m concerned.
Maybe part of it is my cranky old age, but there are plenty of modern films that I enjoy, and Spielberg has had his share of solid movies over the last decade or so, in my view, such as The Fabelmans and Ready Player One (I’m one of those heretics who didn’t like the book, however). I just feel like Disclosure Day missed the mark, although I didn’t hate it as much as a friend who said he was close to walking out of the theater.
This 4K Ultra HD edition includes the movie on 4K and Blu-ray platters, along with a code for a digital copy. The bonus features are scant, but you do get the in-depth, 54-minute making-of Encountering the Unknown: Inside Disclosure Day, which was produced by Laurent Bouzereau, who is well-known in the home video world for his great documentaries of many of Spileberg’s film. This one takes full advantage of its running time to dig deep into the subject matter.
The other extra is a four-minute featurette that takes a quick look at the 52-year, 30-film collaboration between Spielberg and Williams, who is now 94 years old and will hopefully keep composing film scores for a long time to come.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★
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Brad Cook
