'Disclosure Day' review: Close encounter with classic-era Spielberg

"Disclosure Day" begins with a character clutching a backpack full of hard drives, introduces a glowing device of unearthly power, then turns into an action-packed road trip movie. It also poses one of science fiction’s favorite questions: If space aliens came to visit, would humanity tear itself apart or finally come together?

Welcome back to the world of director Steven Spielberg.

I don’t mean the Spielberg of "The Fabelmans," his poignant family drama from 2022, or of "West Side Story," his surprisingly gritty musical from 2021. I mean classic-era Spielberg, the one who kept us slack-jawed through "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," made us mist up during "E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial" and raised our neck hairs in "Jurassic Park." Starring Emily Blunt and Josh O’Connor as strangers drawn together by a shared knowledge of alien life, "Disclosure Day" may sound like a rehash of 1977's "Close Encounters," but it works remarkably well as a 21st-century update. It’s also a return to form for a director who’s still one of the best storytellers around.

Blunt plays Margaret Fairchild, a weather presenter in Kansas City, Mo., who one day begins speaking fluent Russian and Korean without even realizing it. A lapse into some kind of inhuman dialect — on live television — puts her on the radar of Wardex, a government contractor tasked with covering up alien encounters. Its leader, Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth), is already tracking that guy with the backpack, a former employee named Daniel (Josh O’Connor), who has joined a group of defectors led by Hugo Wakefield (Colman Domingo). Their goal: To let the world know the truth about extraterrestrials, going all the way back to Roswell.

Daniel’s girlfriend, Jane (Eve Hewson), worries that people will mistake the aliens for deities. "They’ll stop believing in God," she frets. Jane, a former novitiate, is an effective if slightly too-handy voice for the film’s theological debate. (The screenwriter is David Koepp, a longtime Spielberg collaborator.)

As Margaret, Blunt gives what may be the best performance of her career. She invests a potentially shallow character with depth, slips through languages with Streep-ian ease and, in one scene, goes into a panic attack so visceral that it’s almost contagious. (Next to her, O’Connor’s Daniel can feel a little shrimpy.) Another great performance, easy to overlook, is Firth, whose Scanlon seems fueled by a complex mix of rage, professional duty and personal sorrow.

"Disclosure Day" is a lively, fast-paced, often funny thriller that will remind you what a kinetic director Spielberg can be: Margaret and Daniel are constantly on the run, whether by car, train or — in one wild scene — both. Spielberg's sense of childlike wonder may not be as strong here as in his best-loved films, but he holds, touchingly, to certain beliefs: that people are basically good, that aliens might be our brethren and that the truth matters. (And, uh, that everyone still trusts network news.) How lovely to live, even if just for two hours, in that Spielbergian world.

By Rafer Guzmán

rafer.guzman@newsday.com