Disclosure Day

There’s something Steven Spielberg really thinks you ought to know. Disclosure Day starts with a deceptively simple question: If it was proven to you that we aren’t alone in the universe, would that frighten you?

Daniel (Josh O’Connor) is a a computer hacker with uncanny knack for math. When he suddenly leaves his job with a shadowy organization known as Wardex, they abduct his girlfriend, Jane (Eve Hewson), to use as leverage to trade for artifacts and data he has stolen from them. Wardex is headed by the vicious Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth), who is relentless in pursuing Daniel.

Daniel frees Jane and they escape. With the world on the cusp of war, Daniel must find a way to release the information he’s carrying. He’s guided by another former Wardex employee named Hugo (Colman Domingo). Meanwhile in Kansas City, Missouri, a TV meteorologist named Margaret Fairchild has what appears to be a psychotic break on air when she suddenly speaks in a strange language. She also demonstrates that she knows what people are thinking, and can speak to them in their native tongue, despite never learning it.

“… would it harm us to know the true nature of the universe? “

Margaret feels a strange compulsion to find Daniel (who she doesn’t know), and drags her boyfriend Jackson (Wyatt Russell) along with her as she leaves Kansas City, following an instinct to drive North. They are on a collision course, along with Hugo and Scanlon, to reveal and confront the proof that extra-terrestrial intelligences are real and have visited Earth.

Scanlon is desperate to stop the information release, convinced that it will destabilize world order and cause chaos when humans learn we are not alone. He also fears people will abandon their religious beliefs, turning to the aliens as gods. Daniel fervently believes the world deserves to know, and he’s not convinced humanity will melt down over it.

The film focuses on the chase for the most part as Daniel, Margaret, Scanlon, Hugo, and Jane converge on a destiny none of them can foresee. Can a big, bombastic action thriller also be a complicated, nuanced meditation on deeper themes? With Spielberg at the wheel, the answer is yes. He has pulled this off before, all the way back to Close Encounters of the Third Kind. There’s a lot of connective tissue between that movie and this one. They seem to take place in the same universe. Disclosure Day could function as sort of sequel to Close Encounters. Margaret’s compulsion to find Daniel is similar to Roy Neary’s obsession with Devils Tower.