I want to pan Disclosure Day, as so many others have done online, but I can’t. It’s actually quite good. It’s not vintage Steven Spielberg either, but there’s enough of his distinctive touches in there for the movie to hold itself together. Its main debilitations are how damn long it is, over 2 hours, and how lacklustre most of the cast is. The plot is also a bit obvious, from the word go, at least for someone like me. The opening sequence, inexplicably, has a wrestling match with two contests enjoying their carnage, only for us to find a whistleblower in the crowd being threatened by two official-looking goons.

By Emad Aysha
I guessed straight away this was in The-Day-the-Earth-Stood-Still ilk, with the revelation that extraterrestrial life exists bringing us from the brink of war. No surprise, then, that the second main character, the over-advertised Emily Blunt as weatherwoman Margaret Fairchild, is training to be an anchorwoman, rehearsing lines about the conflict breaking out in Korea between North and South Korea.

More is said later, with comparisons made to the Cuban Missile Crisis; shades of 2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984), where the message from the monolith also saves the world. So, like I said, not terribly original or subliminal, but praiseworthy and timely nonetheless.

Oh, and before I forget, Emily Blunt easily gives the best performance in this movie. It’s wacky and over-the-top, playing a neurotic news persona who’s so driven she doesn’t even have time to have breakfast and breaks the speed limit going to work.

MEDIA FRENZY: Is this Steven Spielberg's parting fictional message or a portent of actual things to come?

As for the whistleblower, Josh O’Connor as Dr Daniel Kellner, he’s a discount Ben Stiller and part of the bigger problem that afflicts this movie. The youngling cast are all lightweight dweebs and feel miscast to boot, including his girlfriend Jane Blankenship (Eve Hewson).

Daniel is no Tarzan, mind you, and his Jane is no Jane. By contrast, the older generation actors are all on the ball. That includes the overly polite villain of the piece, Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth), head of the Wardex Corporation entrusted with the alien secrets.

The thing that pushed Daniel over the edge was witnessing disclosure tapes where they were torturing the visitors. They’re child-like aliens who mean us no harm and see human empathy as an evolutionary advantage, as we’re explicitly told.

There’s an inexcusable side plot here involving Jane, a former nun who tries to dissuade Daniel from exposing it all lest people’s faith in a higher being be shaken. Wouldn’t you know it, Noah (bloody obvious name) is using an alien artefact to invade her consciousness and turn her against her lover boy.

She squeezes her cross into her hand, making her bleed, to no avail during this episode of mental rape. And then conveniently she stabs herself in the same hand wound and wakes up.

Even more conveniently, Noah never uses the device to find out where she’s hiding after Daniel is caught so that she can save the day in the closing sequence. Boo, hiss!

Jane (another boring name, like Daniel) also only sees the light and decides to complete his mission after talking to her head nun, someone who has no problem with aliens and believing in God.

She correctly interprets scripture as saying that man is the Supreme Being, on earth, and nothing more. I’m happy about this, given my own exotheological credentials, but Spielberg is missing the point.

There’s always been a strong exotheological streak in Catholicism, if only because Catholics don’t interpret the Bible literally. In comments he’s made, he makes it sound like they’re the only people holding the floodgates of belief back!

How ironic that the movie is full of Christian symbolism. Once the disclosure goes global, you see people using their mobile phone cameras with the lanterns on, and it looks like candles in a church.

Visually, the movie is impressive. You have trademark Spielberg here, with lovely lens flares, external light sources casting warm shadows that dance over people’s faces and walls, and strong camera positioning.

The special effects, except for the aliens, are impressive and believable. The car stunts are astounding. Especially the automobile that gets crammed into a train with another train coming towards the remainder of the car.

The music, by John Williams, is good and profound when it needs to be, during flashbacks and revelations. But the rest of the time, it’s a bit generic and nowhere near the calibre of such alien-contact classics as E.T. (1982) and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977).

MATHLETES IN THE FIELD: Dr. Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor ) had his brain rewired by aliens. Certainly a novel explanation for crop circles.

The movie also does a good job creating an overlap between super science and fairytales. Margaret Fairchild (corny surname) is haunted by two things from her childhood. The first is her father having Parkinson’s, making her a hypochondriac – with Gucci shoes.

The second is a dream/memory of her in a Hansel & Gretel-type house. Turns out aliens came to her in animal form, and also to Daniel, to remap their brains and give them magic abilities.

As a grown-up she’s visited by a bird, a ‘cardinal’ – religious terms, again – that unleashes her dormant psychic powers. When she speaks in clicks it’s actually code, not an alien tongue. That’s the highpoint of the storyline, if you ask me.

The remainder is too mushy for my taste, with the rest of the bad guys being too lacklustre to bear. Margaret’s boyfriend, Jackson (Wyatt Russell), looks like a generic AI prompt. The henchman, the badly named Casper Boyd (Henry Lloyd-Hughes), looks like an out-of-work Chippendale.

Why has everybody wussed out? Is Spielberg getting old or is he trying to outdo the young? The same problems besotted Ready Player One (2018), with pipsqueaks on both sides and a too obvious plot if you’re a gamer.

So, all in all, it’s a movie worth watching, but even more so at home, where you can hit the pause button. A bit too exposition-heavy and a bit too feel-good, but eye-opening nonetheless. With convincing footage to boot.

I watched an online ‘HD’ version, and the movie is positively everywhere now. Reportedly Spielberg’s last film. Could Daniel’s story be his own, representing some wayward faction in the US elite trying to spill the beans before it’s too late?

BORN AGAIN GALS: Emily Blunt plays weatherwoman Margaret 'Fairchild'. As if the subliminal messaging can get any clearer!

Given that we’re on the brink of nuclear war in the Gulf, let’s surely hope so!!