Steven Spielberg has a new movie out. It’s a big summer sci-fi blockbuster play. When was the last time these words could have been uttered? It’s been over twenty years since 2005’s Tom Cruise amusement ride alien invasion extravaganza, ‘War of the Worlds,’ a film that seemed to replace the auteur’s previous wonderment at the possibility of life above with fear. As the legend approaches his 80th birthday, it’s notable that he seems to be reaching back to the notions of his youth when it comes to extraterrestrials. ‘Disclosure Day’ is more akin to 1977’s ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’, a masterpiece of filmmaking that posited ordinary people touched by the beyond had every right to participate in first contact in the face of government conspiracy. His new film ratchets this up to eleven, making the case that secrets may be shared with the human race at large, but at what cost?

The movie begins in media res, opening with a bravura POV sequence at a professional wrestling match. Josh O’Conner’s whistleblower / leaker character, Daniel Kellner, is making a backpack drop as an exchange for his kidnapped girlfriend Jane (Eve Hewson, familiar for Netflix bingers of ‘The Perfect Couple’). He’s a disgruntled analyst at a private tech company with a top secret government mandate called Wardex, working with other colleagues to release said secrets (led by the indomitable Colman Domingo, having a moment between this and the ‘Euphoria’ finale). She is a former postulant at a Midwest convent and the two have only recently started dating. Neither they nor the audience are aware of these facts, which are expertly revealed in the first third of what is essentially a chase narrative. The other main character, Emily Blunt’s Margaret Fairchild, is a local news meteorologist in Kansas City with anchor aspirations. She’s introduced in a scene with her live-in boyfriend Jackson (Wyatt Russell in a constant state of incredulousness) where she is “activated” through the arrival of a CGI cardinal that flies into their apartment through an open window. Something is way off with her from this moment on, signified by her ability to intuit thoughts and even speak other languages fluently without trying. Blunt is truly fantastic in this role, effortlessly flitting between harried and profound, with what seems to be flawless pronunciations of Russian and Korean.

It’s obvious pretty quickly that these two characters are on a collision course, and it’s in getting there that the film revels in entertaining as only the master Spielberg can deliver. He turns rote chase plot elements into exciting action set pieces, always buoyed by the fact that these are normal people in extraordinary circumstances. There are some sequences that he has said have been in his mind for most of his life, but have never been on screen before. Towards the midpoint of the movie there is a white knuckle scene where a car is pushed onto a train track, its front quarter panel smashed by a moving train but gets stuck and dragged along as the characters try to escape it into the train, all the while being shot at by a pursuer. Not only is this one of the most incredibly staged Spielbergian stakes-increasing visuals, it culminates in a character having a panic attack as a result of this stressful situation, a grounding and believable response to this intense stimuli.

‘Disclosure Day’ is a welcome return for Spielberg to the kinds of movies that made him a household name. It not only harkens back to many of the themes and subjects he’s always been interested in, it displays an unapologetic, non-cynical approach to the matter at hand. It’s best to just let the movie unfold and take the audience on a ride. It’s also best to keep the mind open to the possibility that humanity as a whole might be able to handle world-altering events through simple presentation of facts, a FACT that seems all but impossible today . . .

Directed By: Steven Spielberg

Written By: David Koepp

Running Time: 145 min.

Rated: PG-13

* * * 1/2 (out of 4 stars) -OR- A-