On its surface, Steven Spielberg‘s masterfully crafted new film Disclosure Day might be classified most easily as a 1970s-style thriller in the vein of Three Days of the Condor with Robert Redford or The Parallax View with Warren Beatty, in which increasing creeping paranoia over shadowy governmental activities takes over the lives of the main protagonists. It has that feel for much of the near two-and-a-half-hour running time, like the filmmaker has taken on the task of essentially pulling off a big chase film harkening back to his earliest Hollywood movies, also a kind of hybrid in part of Duel and The Sugarland Express.
But this is Spielberg, a moviemaker supreme who has bigger thoughts, larger questions about the universe and is still trying to get answers a half century after he dazzled the world with Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and shortly thereafter with E.T. the Extra Terrestrial. In those films he used the wonder of what’s in the stars to make us believe and hope we were not alone. In Disclosure Day, he has made an action movie rivaling the best of ’em with a deeper purpose in an age of calculated misinformation to demand answers to our most ethereal questions and to link them to a larger canvas. It makes this stunning movie the director’s most spiritually moving film in a career that is unmatched in simply making us ask what else is out there, and more importantly why.
Yes, Disclosure Day has many layers, but it is also a crackerjack rip-roaring ride for much of its running time, a movie that essentially centers on two main characters in search of answers to what is happening to them, keeping the audience in the dark as much as they are. It is all set in motion against a world on the brink of a major crisis, the worst threat to nuclear annihilation since the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. That is apparent from almost whispered news reports heard incidentally on the soundtrack, but the main event is a race against time to reveal to the planet something even bigger than that unimaginable moment.
It is set up when we are introduced to Dr. Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor), a cyber-security expert who works for the mysterious company Wandex, an organization tasked with keeping the biggest secrets of the government, all truths about Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena or UAP, from ever getting out. For Kellner, who has done prison time for hacking but is an incredible resource because of his ability with numbers and data, and keeping it undercover, it has all become too much. He knows things, has seen things that would have an overwhelming effect on humanity if ever released, and now he is determined he must do that, so has actually stolen all that physical evidence and data hidden from the world since the Roswell crash in 1947, and is on the run.
Joined by his girlfriend, a former nun named Jane (Eve Hewson), he has to evade everyone behind Wardex, most notably its leader, Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth), a titular villain here with a determined belief that if any of the truth about alien encounters got out it would result in severe damage for the world. Scanlon is a complicated bad guy who in the vast headquarters uses an instrument called the Device to psychically invade the heads of his prey, notably Kellner, and later Jane and one other person who appears to be taken over by circumstances and elements beyond her control.
That character is Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt), a Kansas City TV weathercaster whose life is about to be completely disrupted. There are clues when a red cardinal appears magically through the window of her house and she starts, unknowingly how or why, speaking in fluent Russian to her confused boyfriend, Jackson (an amusing Wyatt Russell). Later, during a broadcast, she zones out and spouts weird, alien-like noises before collapsing on the set. Still later she demonstrates a perfect Korean dialect but has no idea why or that she is doing all of this. She is being haunted by her past but with zero understanding, and increasing frustration by Jackson who is the everyman here who just doesn’t get what is happening to her. The story goes back and forth between Kellner and Fairchild, both now on the run and searching for the truth, and soon to do it together before it is all too late.
To say much more would be critical malpractice. This is the kind of motion picture you just have to experience on its own terms and let unfold. With a story dreamed up by Spielberg, and expertly crafted into a screenplay by David Koepp as a perfect bookend to Close Encounters most obviously — but also harkening back in some other ways to movies he has done like The Post, Bridge of Spies, and to a lesser degree War of the Worlds — he has created a film that ultimately is asking for empathy in a world that has seemed to have forgotten what that means. Disclosure Day is an urgent call to fight back against misinformation, a clear threatening cancer for the future of the human race, and a very real one overtaking our daily lives. The truth will save us all, if we are allowed to hear it. In this movie that is the key message, and sincere hope for mankind.
The acting across the board here is first rate. Blunt simply has never been better, and this is a very complicated and challenging role involving multiple languages and an A-to-Z range of emotional dexterity to pull it off. She is sensational. O’Connor matches her beat for beat as the man who knew too much and knows the only way out of his head is to get it to every living person on the planet all at once. Colman Domingo as Hugo Wakefield, a once devoted believer in Wardex’s mission but now a man desperately trying to guide Kellner and Fairchild to their destiny. He is the heart and soul of this film, the one character who understands what is really at stake. Domingo nails it and is very moving. Also impressive is Hewson, whose character brings a strong religious aspect to where this is all eventually headed. She is the spiritual glue the story needs to come completely together and she does it brilliantly. Firth’s character threatens to go a bit over the top, but this fine actor manages to resist making him a completely stereotypical villain as it is clear, like so many currently running the U.S. government, he actually believes he is right and will stop at nothing to keep the truth from appearing.
As is always the case with a Spielberg film, you can count on first-rate craft and there is no question Disclosure Day has it with Janusz Kaminsky’s sharp cinematography, Sarah Brosher’s pulse-pounding editing, John Williams’ pitch-perfect score, the dazzling visual effects of Matthew Butler and his team, and the superb production design from Adam Stockhausen (notably in the spectacular television control room scene towards the end of the film which is a triumph for all these disciplines). A car chase that collides into the side of a moving train with Blunt and O’Connor hanging on for dear life is a new action highlight in the Spielberg canon, a blast to watch.
It is gratifying to see a so-called summer blockbuster, the box office genre Spielberg invented with Jaws, that has so much more on its mind than just to entertain. There is no question this film does that, but it is even more significant and heartening that \Spielberg hasn’t lost his own sense of wonder and yes, empathy to be able to still craft a movie that also is able to make us think, and still have hope for a greater good in a world that is clearly losing its way.
Producers are Spielberg and Kristie Macosko Krieger.
Title: Disclosure Day
Distributor: Universal
Release date: June 12, 2026
Director: Steven Spielberg
Screenwriters: David Koepp; story by Steven Spielberg
Cast: Emily Blunt, Josh O’Connor, Colin Firth, Colman Domingo, Eve Hewson, Wyatt Russell, Tommy Martinez, Henry Lloyd-Hughes
Rating: PG-13
Running time: 2 hr 25 mins
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