Disclosure Day review: "Spielberg's best blockbuster since Minority Report"

It'll be news to no one that Steven Spielberg has directed several of cinema's defining sci-fi movies: Close Encounters, E.T. and Jurassic Park among them. With this track record, an original sci-fi blockbuster from Hollywood's greatest living commercial filmmaker arrives burdened with expectations few movies could hope to reach. Well, Spielberg is no ordinary filmmaker, and Disclosure Day is an extraordinary movie.

Shrouded in the kind of pre-release secrecy typically reserved for comic-book fare, Disclosure Day has remained something of a mystery right up to the eve of release. Speculation around the movie has ranged from the idea that it's a stealth sequel to Close Encounters of the Third Kind, to the deeply conspiratorial prospect that Spielberg is working with the US government to reveal the truth about aliens to the world via the medium of cinema.

We hate to break it to any true believers out there: neither is true. But what is true is that Disclosure Day is Spielberg's best blockbuster since Minority Report, and shares as much DNA with that sci-fi thriller as it does Close Encounters or E.T. Because Disclosure Day is as much a full-throttle chase movie as the alien movie being sold in trailers. Reset expectations accordingly.

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Space race

Set in the present day, as World War 3 unfolds on the periphery, Disclosure Day starts, rather thrillingly, in medias res, with desk-jockey Daniel Kellner (Josh O'Connor) on the run from Noah Scanlon's (Colin Firth) G-Men after swiping a dangerous alien device and an 'archive' of hard drives. As we quickly learn, Scanlon heads up an extra-governmental organization called WRDEX, which is responsible for maintaining the greatest cover-up in human history: the existence of alien lifeforms. Kellner, with the help of Colman Domingo's Hugo, intends to disclose this fact to the world.

In parallel, Emily Blunt's weather reporter, Margaret Fairchild, goes through something of an awakening live on air, briefly speaking in indecipherable clicks, as other impossible abilities manifest. With the movie scarcely letting its foot off the gas, Margaret and Daniel are set on a collision course, with ramifications that could forever change humanity's understanding of our place in the universe.

Disclosure Day is a movie with Big Ideas, then, arriving at an opportune moment as the real-life disclosure movement picks up pace out of the US. Working with Jurassic Park screenwriter David Koepp, Spielberg has crafted a story that does justice to its epochal concepts. Touching on the nature of religion in a universe where humans aren't alone in the vastness of space via Eve Hewson's Jane – Kellner's girlfriend and an ex-novitiate who gets swept up in the pursuit – and outright stating that empathy is humanity's "foremost evolutionary advantage," it's a film with a particular point of view about where we're heading as a species, what it is that makes us human and how we can be saved.

Heady stuff for a summer blockbuster, but Spielberg knows the audience better than anyone, and Disclosure Day is, first and foremost, a rollicking ride. Spielberg has never truly been off the boil (The Fabelmans and West Side Story are considered masterpieces by many), but Disclosure Day is something of a return to the thrilling, freewheeling form of his 80s blockbuster moviemaking heyday, where bravura technical precision is in perfect chorus with a seemingly boundless sense of wonder.

Third kind

Returning to an old favorite – the train chase – Disclosure Day does something you've almost certainly never seen before, adding a car to the mix in a uniquely stomach-jumping fashion. Body hijacking (or 'diving') becomes an important mechanic and is visualized in such a simple but effective way that you can't help but be dazzled by Spielberg's ability to generate unforgettable images at almost 80 years old. And without getting into spoilers, he knows when to hit the brakes, capping over two hours of pulse-racing pursuit with a moving denouement that is deliberately static, but pure editing magic.

Amidst it all, Emily Blunt is on career-best form as a woman who knows she's meant for more, and finally discovers her place in the universe. There's a touch of Carole Lombard to Blunt here in a performance that teeters towards screwball – most obvious in an otherwise inconsequential sequence where the movie briefly pauses so Margaret can act incredulous as her clueless boyfriend, Jackson (an enjoyable Wyatt Russell), fails to run over her smartphone three times in a row. But when she's called on to play the magnitude of the moment, Blunt's performance never rings untrue.

Disclosure Day wants you to have fun. This isn't the kind of bleak conspiracy movie where heroes are abruptly bumped off by shadowy enforcers. In that way, it's more Men in Black than Michael Clayton. The stakes are high, but there's a comforting sense that, despite the odds, everything will be OK. And when the emotional hammer does eventually drop, it arrives with a wallop, John Williams holding back the superb score's most devastating refrains for maximum impact.

The truth is out there

What you may find curious is that we've hardly mentioned aliens in all this. That's because extraterrestrials are a much smaller part of the movie than you might think. For some, this will undoubtedly prove disappointing. You really don't get much more than Close Encounters' fleeting greeting. But as Domingo's Hugo says at one point during a revealing head-to-head with Firth's Noah, the film's non-human lifeforms are "unknowable" and learning any more about them would risk robbing the movie of its mystery.

There are answers (eventually) to the biggest questions, but Disclosure Day knows when nothing would be as satisfying as leaving a negative possibility space in your mind. Again, this may come as a disappointment to some; the very end in particular leaves an open question on the table that will likely enrage and inspire fervent debate in equal measure. And Koepp's script undoubtedly tackles more than is realistically manageable in feature film format; its exploration of religion in the face of incontrovertible proof aliens are real feels limited by the runtime, and is exacerbated by the fact that Hewson's Jane disappears for a chunk of the movie.

But what a thrill to have Spielberg back in the original blockbuster game. Disclosure Day might not hit the heights of the 'berg's all-time A-tier, but it comes impressively close, and is a worthy companion piece to Close Encounters and E.T., and a final word on a subject of Spielbergian obsession that has spanned decades. Truly an auspicious day.

Disclosure Day releases in UK cinemas on June 10, and US theaters on June 12. For more, check out our list of upcoming movies heading your way throughout the year.