Disclosure Day Review
IT’S TIME TO RETIRE… STEPHEN SPIELBERG & JOHN WILLIAMS Should never make another movie… John at 94, came out of retirement to score DISCLOSURE DAY for his long-time friend. It was painful to watch. What 70’s and 80’s child doesn’t revere the greatest director and composer of all time? And to watch them fail so publicly in the twilight of their career is… difficult.
DISCLOSURE DAY was my most anticipated movie of 2026. Only seven months into the year I have it ranked 20th, below Supergirl and above Into The Grey… Yes it is THAT bad. So what went wrong? Yes Williams did create the music, but he must not have scored it scene by scene. It was over the top for the villain and overly whimsical and dramatic in places where it hadn’t yet to be earned.
But this movie can be summed up by the 58 second sequence where we watch Emily Blunt and Wyatt Russell try and destroy a cell phone. It’s… ridiculous. She throws it out of the car, then he fails to run it over properly, so she gets out of the car and places it under a tire to only not have it destroyed enough so she then stomps on it and then yells at Wyatt to open the door. It’s nonsense and a complete waste of the audience’s time. And it’s all over the movie.
The horribly cast Josh O’Connor as Daniel Kellner spends several minutes unstealthily avoiding bad guys. Did Spielberg think this was a comedy? There were so many car chases, that with the inappropriate score, I had to wonder if I were watching The Goonies blundering Fratellis. I mean, are these Men in Black or What? Where is the danger? This is over the fight for the future of humanity and they kill no one? O’Connor is frankly awful and totally unbelievable as a leading man. For the love of God, why didn’t you make Wyatt Russell the lead? His character Jackson was insufferable. And Colin Firth plays a mustache twirling villain who is actually sympathetic? Pick a lane… he has no teeth and in the end just gives up because?
Blunt was fantastic because she always is, but her acting seems incredibly overdramatic because Spielberg failed to get the tone right in this movie. It’s obvious he is chasing CLOSE ENCOUNTERS through this whole film desperately trying to connect them somehow but in his attempt fails. What makes Close Encounters great is that besides having an incredible actor in Richard Dryfuss, the wonder that we all feel in the final act of the movie is earned because we have evolved with the main character. In DISCLOSURE DAY, Spielberg attempts to capture that final act of CE throughout DD and it simply doesn’t work. There is too much backstory when we begin the movie. There are too many things left unexplained or makes no sense. Why is everyone terrified of Kellner holding the alien device in the beginning when we learn it isn’t even a weapon… Strange.
The bottom line is that at 79, Spielberg needs to stop directing. His last great movie was in 2002 with Minority Report and while Catch me if you can, War of the Worlds and even The Fabelmans were fine, I would prefer he stop and enjoy the fruits of his labors before he hurts his legacy. The great ones leave at the top. DISCLOSURE DAY is proof that Spielberg just can’t make a blockbuster anymore. And that’s fine. From Jaws to Jurassic Park and Empire of the Sun to Saving Private Ryan, we have plenty of Spielberg to go back and enjoy. He is still the Goat, so I implore him to quit now so he isn’t remembered like Kubrick or Coppola for utter failures at the end of distinguished careers.
Grade: D
