Steven Spielberg’s aliens are back, in a film that is, emotionally at least, hardly about outer space at all. If E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial was a film about humans finding a way to bond with creatures from other planets, Disclosure Day is very much a film about humans learning to bond with each other. It’s a giant, glorious blockbuster with a huge heart: despite its bleak outlook on global self-interest poisoning contemporary politics, it’s deeply embedded with a very Spielbergian hopefulness for human empathy. It also, crucially, has an absolute whopper of a cast doing career-best work. It’s surely time for Emily Blunt’s Oscar now.
Blunt is Margaret Fairchild, a restless Kansas City weather girl who yearns for more. One day, Margaret develops extraordinary gifts. From the hilarious “hailstones shimmy” she does while predicting bad weather on a sunny day, to suddenly, inexplicably speaking Russian and suffering a harrowing panic attack on a train, Blunt moves seamlessly between flawless comedic timing and despair. All as she tries to figure out her new purpose and evade the capture of chief bad guy Noah (Colin Firth), who works alongside the government to cover up decades-old secrets that threaten to blow apart humanity’s understanding of itself.
