This is the first Steven Spielberg film I have seen at the cinema since 2018’s Ready Player One. Spielberg is one of the greatest directors of all time and with the cinema landscape changing in this post COVID world, it was exciting to see what Spielberg could come up with. The cinema experience didn’t get off to the best start when there was a very long ‘film’ featuring all the players taking part at this summer's World Cup. It seemed to go on and on and on to the point where it really bothered me. I don't mind football but I didn’t go to the cinema on a Sunday afternoon to watch a football advert.
From a plot point of view, the film is somewhat standard. It seems like there is a big mystery and the hunt for Daniel is fairly standard but I think that it was just lacking something that made it seem epic. The reveal that Margaret and Daniel were experimented on and that is how they are connected comes quite late in the film and the revelation is left quite late in the film and yet its never made to feel important. It’s just made to feel like it answered a question that people may have had.
Emily Blunt play Margaret who at the start of the film is a weather anchor and soon becomes the anchor of the film as she seems to be able to speak the alien language and has to find Daniel. There is a nice sense of mystery as to how she can suddenly speak languages she never knew she could speak and how she seems to know everything about someone the moment she looks at them. Josh O’Connor is Daniel who is the one instantly on the run and I thought that his character was the more interesting of the two but because the focus is really on Margaret, Daniel is made to be important because Margaret needs to find him. Together they have very good chemistry so its a shame that it seems to take quite a long time for them to share a scene together. Eve Henson has a rather thankless role as Jane. Her best portion of the film comes when they arrive at the monastery and when Jane is talking to Noah. The rest of the time she is just the love interest of Daniel.
Colman Domingo spends most of the film walking around a fake house and is the one dispensing information to Margaret and Daniel. Now I like Domingo and thought his performance in Michael was really good but felt like despite this not being a particuarly great role, Domingo’s sheer charisma makes you forget about this whilst the film is on. Colin Firth spends 90% of his time in the film sat down. Every chance he gets to sit down he takes it and it was more noticeable when he was walking because it didn’t happen very often. He plays Noah who is the boss of a sinister government organisation and it seems like their motivation is to get the information that Daniel has stolen.
The whole fake house thing baffles me. The film spends a good portion of the film and when it comes to being part of the film, its just one room that is used. It felt like the making of the house was just to give Colman Domingo’s character something to walk around in until he was needed with Daniel and Margaret. Also the whole idea of people watching the news feed on their phones felt very cliched although the moment where people are catching the bus, stand up and then sit down did make me chuckle. There is also the part when they are throwing over to the other news stations and someone says ‘BBC News’ which is absolutely silly cause there is no way that the BBC would just throw over to this feed. It would take several hours for them to have the courage to show this stuff.
Spielberg managed to drag his long-time composer John Williams out of retirement to do this score. My question is WHY? It is perhaps the most underwhelming score from one of the greatest composers of all time. I suppose if you are going to phone it in, when you are in your early nineties is the perfect time to do it. It’s not terrible but lacked something that is normally baked into his scores.
If Disclosure Day were made by anyone else then this would be a good effort but because its a Steven Spielberg film then I have to say that I found the film somewhat underwhelming. There are things to like but it felt like it missed the mark. This felt like an old fashioned film and if this has been made in the 90’s then I probably would have liked it very much but given where the sci-fi genre is nowaways, it feels like its slightly dated shows that Spielberg probably needs to leave this sort of film alone cause he doesn't seem to have the energy or creativity to be able to pull it off anymore.
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