Disclosure Day

Synopsis:  Former government worker turns whistleblower, racing to reveal proof of aliens visiting Earth. Meanwhile, a newscaster gains psychic abilities that include speaking in an alien language.

No more having to watch the program Ancient Aliens to learn more about the extraterrestrials we know are out there. We already know that America’s first president, George Washington received word of British troop movements from “green skinned” humanoids (whom he assumed were Natives) that helped him win the war for independence. I concede that the entry in his war journals has been lost to the mists of time…or an international cabal. Further, the Egyptian pyramids themselves are evidence that aliens disbursed robotic cats with laser eyes to cut the blocks for the structures. Very labor-saving for the workers whether they were enslaved or not. Why else do you think that the ancient Egyptians worshipped cats?

Thankfully, the legendary documentarian Steven Spielberg has released Disclosure Day, revealing, if not all, much. In 1982, his documentary E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial acquainted us with “E.T.” the gentle creature with a taste for candy and a love of gardening. It was reassuring to see how adorable he was, looking like a big-eyed turtle who has lost their shell.

I’m not so gullible as to believe that all baby aliens are as cute as the telepathically-gifted Grogu or the communally-chanting Ewoks. No; witnesses in Roswell, New Mexico confirm that the aliens who have been most recently visiting Earth are hairless, smallish-bipedal creatures with long arms, big heads and big eyes. Maybe they needed long arms to reach their home planet food sources—probably from the sort of plants you would find on Pandora (see James Cameron’s Avatar documentaries). Big heads are needed to house big brains that could master intergalactic travel. And those big eyes? Nocturnal creatures, of course. I bet their skin is sun-sensitive. And those big eyes serve them well whilst they are zipping around the universe.

I’m not going to lie to you—although your government might like that—Mr. Spielberg has recovered photographic evidence of aliens on Earth. Or rather, Daniel Kellner has. Dan worked in cybersecurity for Wardex, a secret police & intelligence company tied to the U.S. government. Daniel has turned whistleblower because he has learned some things that the public has a right to know. Aliens exist and they have visited our planet. Remain Calm, People.

Daniel has absconded from his workplace in Washington, D.C. with a backpack full of computer files. While he waits for a contact to hand over the bag to, Wardex employees are after him. He’s scared—these people are like ICE agents and the whole organization is focused on him. He gets even more scared when his handler Hugo (a former Wardex employess) calls to tell him to keep the data safe for another 24 hours. He’s just a math brainiac and a decent human being for God’s sake—how is he supposed to elude a battalion of agents?

Dan is also worried for his girlfriend, Jane. Jane looks suspiciously like Eve Hewson, the daughter of the legendary singer of U2, Bono. But, no, that can’t be her because Wardex has photos of her as a novitiate aka nun-in-training. And I don’t think the Hewson family is uber Catholic. Anyway, Dan wants her to leave him so that she won’t be in danger, but she is a loyal friend.

Meanwhile, in Kansas City, the weather reporter Margaret Fairchild has been feeling on edge. Part of it seems to be that she’s unhappy with her job.  She wants to be a news anchor. It’s too bad that she didn’t think of that before getting a meteorology degree. Margaret has to adopt some outdated giggly weather girl persona whilst delivering the weather report for the nightly news. Wow, people’s perception of her will really change when—on air—she starts speaking in a weird clickety alien language. Even cicadas would be weirded-out. So will her boyfriend, Jackson. Jackson, a guitarist, seems befuddled even before this episode, so he really won’t know what to do now.

Hmm, there is an allusion to some incident in her childhood that seems to have given rise to her anxieties. Margaret has recently become empathetic and telepathic, freaking people out by telling them stuff that they need to hear. Not stuff like, Yes, you are spending too much time on your phone. She tells them things like, You need to cut contact with your toxic ex. And besides her knowledge of Alienese, Margaret has become a polyglot of earthly languages. In one instance, she casually intervenes to translate for an English speaker and a Korean speaker. Wow, kind of a show-off. (I’m just jelly, I’d be doing the same.) Wild animals have also been approaching her with curiosity.

Hugo has called her after seeing her hair raising telecast. After telling her what’s going on and that he wants to meet her, Hugo instructs her to destroy her phone. Now Margaret is on the run too. But first, the phone. She tosses the cell out of the car window and directs her clueless boyfriend to drive over it. It’s a $600 phone! he pleads. What he really wants to do is get her to a mental hospital. No, you fool! She’s not crazy!

Wardex and the U.S. government don’t want the public to know about the aliens because they assume it will cause panic and chaos. With humanity’s past world wars and other current wars, could things really get worse? Perhaps the aliens are only exploring, like the good humans and creatures of the Star Trek movies whose prime directive is to not interfere with creatures on their home planets. But we don’t really know because, after all, those movies are works of fiction.

While Dan and Jane are on the run, they sometimes have quiet time to talk while they are hiding in the bushes. Dan tells her that as he got better and better at math, no one wanted to be friends with him. That makes sense. I find that good conversationalists rarely talk about math. Jane tells Dan that if he releases the files, people will lose their religion. Well, why would that happen unless the aliens tell them they are gods? And if they start talking about math all the time, people will stop listening anyway. They would need to perform some cool miracles.

We see some footage of the aliens. They don’t have shark-like teeth, or bear-like strength or tough armor like a super beetle. Their bodies are just as vulnerable as ours. And I hate to say it, but people are violent, so you might want to use your superior technology to have some device on your person—uh, alien, that would at least repel an attacker. Small spoiler alert regarding about 20 seconds worth of alien video that we see early on, skip to the next paragraph if you don’t want to know…. Okay, so these darling aliens seem passive. But of course, the military that arrive at the scene detain them and then subject the aliens to interrogation. We don’t see much, except several men pinning an alien to a table with restraints and the poor creature shrieking in terror.

So, you’ve heard of rumors that an alien vessel crashed in Roswell, New Mexico? One would think that with their advanced technology they would have the ‘landing a spacecraft’ thing down pat. And perhaps they could have sent un-aliened craft to Earth to intelligence-gather. Maybe they concentrated on peaceable manatees by mistake, instead of seeing how dangerous people can be. Or, along the lines of Jane’s Christian beliefs, if they had reached out to Jesus (maybe their home planet is near heaven?), the Son of God could’ve told them, based on his own lived experiences, that Earthlings are a rough crowd.

All this time, evil Hugo from Wardex is rabidly chasing them. He uses some alien reverse-engineered technology to try and get in people’s head. He also does bad old-fashioned interrogation. One person of interest is kidnapped and he hounds them: Where did you go to meet so & so? What highway did they drive down? Did the car you were in turn left or right?  The brave person resists and lies: I don’t know. If it were me, with my terrible sense of direction, I’d be truthfully telling them: I don’t know where we turned and I’m not even sure if it was dawn or dusk, come to think of it. All I know is that a Taylor Swift song was on at some point.

It’s not all just Jane trying to find Dan. Dan creeping around. Both destroying phones. Or Hugo, dressed like an old-timey college professor, directing some sort of set-building in a warehouse. There are action scenes with car chases and climbing out windows. The best is an action scene with a car being dragged along by a train while the car occupants try to climb onto the train while being shot at. The best non-action scene is when a person provides mental health first aid, soothing someone experiencing a panic attack.

Ultimately, Disclosure Day is less a movie about aliens than it is a movie about humans and how they would react to aliens. I feel like 1/3 of people might be inclined to be curious about the aliens and sympathetic to them while 2/3 of humans might be curious and murderous. What is not debatable though is the fact that Steven Spielberg is our greatest documentarian of aliens. Unless you are a big James Cameron fan. I would disagree, but his time travel back to 1912 to document the Titanic disaster with only one camera was a singular feat.

P.S. Actors looking much like the people in the film: Margaret, Emily Blunt… Dan, Josh O’Connor… Hugo, Colman Domingo…Jane, Eve Hewson… Noah, Colin Firth… Jackson, Wyatt Russell

Movie Loon’s Movie Review Shortcut:

Grade:   A-

Cut to the Chase:  Despite some head-scratching moments (eg., how does one character know about another’s decorating 30 years ago? Why don’t agents ever look behind them when someone escapes?), it’s a thought-provoking, and fast-paced quality production.

Humor Highlight:  A vexed Hugo tells former employee Dan that he finds his disloyalty hurtful.