Bit late to the party with this one, but I finally saw DISCLOSURE DAY and…. It’s OK. But sadly, not particularly memorable either. I guess I can say that… at least it’s not boring? It being pretty much one giant chase scene after another. Some of these do get a bit implausibly silly – these super-secret government agents do seem quite shockingly inept! But as for the story… Well, it’s pretty dated and unsatisfying, with little in the way of intellectual heft, but plenty of signature Speilberg Schmaltz. It doesn’t end with a bang, so much as a whimper, when it should have gone full 2001 – or even Close Encounters of the Third Kind!
On the plus side, the cast are pretty good. Emily Blunt, in particular, gives a fantastic central performance that lifts up every scene she’s in. And Colin Firth makes for a reasonably interesting and effective Antagonist. The score by John Williams is wonderful, but used surprisingly sparingly. But man – when it does kick in, it really did send a bit of a shiver down my spine – and I felt a bit of the old classic Spielberg magic creeping back.
Sadly, the same can’t be said about the cinematography. Janusz Kaminski has been Spielfberg’s regular DOP since Schindler’s List and there’s a lifelessness to the look of most of his films. There’s a ton of lens flares in some scenes, but at the same time everything looks so drab and flat and grey. It really needed a lusher look. Instead of echoing Minority Report and War of the Worlds. I’m sure he was going for “grittiness”, but there’s a fine line between that and drab.
So in short, I’m not saying it’s not worth seeing in the cinema. The action sequences do feel great in places and that score really hits the emotions when it needs to. But it’s frustrating to imagine how much better this could have been with a stronger story and script.
