Disclosure Day

 

I have no doubt Steven Spielberg's Disclosure Day will fascinate or enrage audience members, maybe not in equal numbers but enough to make summertime family barbecues even more interesting than they normally are.

In this welcome return to sci-fi thrillers, Spielberg has cast Emily Blunt and Josh O'Connor in the roles of two strangers -- one a Midwest weather reporter named Margaret (Blunt) and the other Daniel, a Washington, D.C., data analyst (O'Connor) -- who seem to be connected to mysterious phenomena occurring just as global tensions start to boil over.

They are being pursued by Daniel's former boss, the humorless head of a tech firm, Noah (a fiendish Colin Firth), who has been handling top secret information for the U.S. government and keeping tabs on alien presences wanting to make uninvited contact. Daniel has stolen this information with plans to distribute it worldwide.

Noah's nemesis Hugo (played by Colman Domingo) is a former staff member leading a force of true believers who feel humankind has run out of answers, patience and time. They welcome an intervention and are proving to be formidable opponents to those wanting to maintain secrecy about what's been documented for decades.

The film is true to the quality one has come to expect from Spielberg's Amblin Studios. It's kinetic and absorbing, the chases (especially an elaborate set-piece involving a speeding train) are riveting and the subplots about the frailty of human connections thoughtful.

The film touches on matters of trust and faith, in both the secular and the spiritual senses, in a secondary story about Daniel's girlfriend Jane, which adds interesting shadings to the story.

Spielberg's staging of the finale -- the "disclosure" -- will frustrate some audience members, understandably, but I am confident it will strike others as "Yes! Perfect!"

I'm in the latter group.