Much of the blame for this should be laid at the door of the writing. David Koepp is a scribe with a mixed bag of a track record, illustrated by the fact he penned the screenplays for both the magnificent Jurassic Park and the abominable Jurassic World Rebirth. Here, he’s taken an original story from Spielberg and built it into a 145-minute conspiracy thriller/chase movie that neither thrills nor gets any momentum going. In fact, it feels like a first draft that no one got around to actually scrutinising.
That can be the only explanation for Disclosure Day’s sizeable flaws. It’s populated by characters that, aside from Emily Blunt’s weather reporter with mysterious abilities, we know little about and care even less for. They spout exposition that clangs like a crashed UFO, regularly jolting you out of proceedings (“History doesn’t have a reset key,” the nefarious Noah Scanlon, played by a woefully miscast Colin Firth, says at one point).
These characters, good and bad, are separated from one another, yet seem to have a sense of what their counterparts are doing and why, though no one has thought to let the audience in on the logic. We’re constantly building towards something, the Disclosure Day of the title, yet once it arrives, it won’t be gasps you’ll hear in the cinema, but a collective shrugging of shoulders.
There is an attempt at the profound, but it’s so hurried and late in the game you’re not sufficiently invested to feel its punch. Additionally, in a world in which empathy is a dwindling resource when it comes to human lives, the film’s attempt to tug at the heart strings feels naive.
The underwhelming nature of the ending might be less of a bitter pill if there was anything exciting on the journey towards it. Even in Spielberg’s ‘lesser’ works, there are moments of wonder that captivate and endure. Think the velociraptors in the long grass in The Lost World: Jurassic Park, or the cavalry charge of horses reaching the German trenches in War Horse, their riders having been mowed down by machine gun fire. There is nothing anywhere near as exciting or affecting here.