(M) 145 minutes
Disclosure Day plays like a sampling of its director Steven Spielberg’s favourite genres. There are traces of Duel, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Minority Report and ET, all wrapped up in his lifelong fascination with the concept of extraterrestrial life. I have no idea if he really believes in UFOs but if not, he’s been doing a very convincing imitation of one of the converted while promoting the film.
He told one interviewer that the script for Close Encounters was an example of wish fulfilment but that he is now inclined to think that he has been right all along. We are not the only intelligent civilisation in the universe and that’s a good thing.
Spielberg has generally taken an optimistic tack when it comes to the possibility of friendly space aliens. The only time he crossed to the other side was in 2005 with his hyperactive adaptation of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds. Now he’s sounding hopeful again. In this story, the bad guys are all Earthlings. The action centres on an organised team of idealistic whistleblowers out to expose the workings of their ex-employer, Wardex, a sinister corporation paid by the US government to keep the truth about UFOs to itself.
It’s run by Colin Firth, who has been playing too many villains lately. It seems unfair that the sang-froid which made him so sexy as Jane Austen’s Mr Darcy now gets him cast as a cold fish, but he’s very good at it. Noah Scanlon is on the verge of maniacal. Convinced that the global population would succumb to mass hysteria at the news of extraterrestrial visitors, he’s set on hunting down the whistleblowers and eliminating them as fast as possible.
