- Directed by: Steven Spielberg
- Written by: David Koepp, Steven Spielberg
- Stars: Emily Blunt, Josh O’Connor, Colin Firth
- Run Time: 2 Hours, 25 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCYT8vb2siQ
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
Aliens are real, and some people want to disclose that, and some people really, really want to keep it a secret. So we have two and a half hours of back-and-forth chasing and strangeness and science fiction mish-mash.
We both thought it was on the long side, with too much filler and not enough disclosure.
Spoilery Synopsis
We open with wrestlers beating each other up in the ring. Daniel Kellner sits in the audience, not interested in the show at all. We soon see that he’s there to pay the ransom for Jane. The kidnappers release Jane to him, but they’re a big, well-run group, and Noah Scanlon is in charge. He wants the “device” that Daniel has, and it’s very dangerous. Noah warns that there’s no reset for what Daniel’s about to do, but Daniel knows this.
Jane asks what kind of treason Daniel’s done, and he says it’s complicated. He’s got a big bag full of memory cards of data, and he calls Hugo Wakefield to take them.
We see that Noah is working for Wardex, who works for the government, and they’ve had a big leak of security information. Many people from their own organization didn’t show up for work this morning, including Hugo, so it’s some kind of organized betrayal.
Daniel explains to Jane that he stole the data that he was paid to protect. “People have a right to know,” he whines.
In Kansas City, Jackson and Margaret joke about her newscaster audition. She sees a random cardinal bird and then starts speaking Russian. She doesn’t even know she was doing it. When a cop pulls her over, she knows all about the cop; telepathy or something. She’s the weather person on the news, and she suddenly starts talking Korean to a guest; she doesn’t speak Korean. When it’s time to actually give the weather report, she just makes weird clicking sounds.
Noah gets a report about Margaret speaking in clicks on national TV. The sound she makes matches something that upsets him greatly. Margaret has had nightmares all her life and doesn’t remember much about her childhood.
Danny and Jane go with a guy to a safe house. He explains that Wardex deals with dead aliens from the 1970s. Not just that, but they’ve tortured and dissected live aliens as well. This has been going on for 79 years, and Daniel’s got proof of all of it. He wants full disclosure of all of it to the entire world. Jane’s not sure the world needs to know; it’ll be really disruptive. She’s afraid people will lose their religion.
Margaret runs from the Wardex guys and talks to Hugo, who warns her to stay away from those guys. Jackson has no idea what’s going on, but he does what Margaret says. Hugo shows Margaret’s clicking to Daniel, who thinks it’s all English, he understands it perfectly.
Noah tries using one of the alien devices, and doesn’t like the results. He tries it again, and takes partial control of Margaret’s body remotely. He then projects himself there to have a conversation with her, where he gets her location. Margearet somehow picks up all this and warns Daniel to run. He then steals a car and shows us how incompetent the Wardex guys are.
Jackson thinks there’s something wrong with Margaret, and she knows he’s about to break up with her if she moves. She knows more about everything than she should. She abandons him at a convenience store where everyone is panic-buying the gas and merchandise because of news and stuff.
The Wardex guys raid the motel where Daniel and Jane are staying. She gets away with a device, but the baddies catch Daniel and the backpack.
Just on instinct, Margaret is not far behind. She knows all the secret codes, so the guards let her right in. Noah knows who she is and lets her leave with Daniel. All the guards see them, but they appear to be friends and relatives, so they let them pass. They all see something very personal. Daniel doesn’t really understand it, but he had a strange encounter with a cardinal as well.
Noah and Hugo have a “diving” conversation, and Hugo says he’s working for the aliens. They both believe the other is irrational.
Jane talks to Sister Maura about religious ideas. The existence of aliens might or might not make people of faith lose their minds.
Margaret and Daniel finally make it to where Hugo is. He’s rebuilt a copy of her childhood home so she can regress to her missing childhood. “When you do, you’ll know everything, more than is humanly possible.” He was gifted to understand the aliens, and she was gifted to understand the humans. They get a vision of animals visiting her as a child, but they aren’t really animals. “They present as animals to calm us,” explains Hugo. We see both Daniel and Margaret as the aliens abducted them and “upgraded” them.
Noah and his men arrive and come inside, but they don’t see anything; Margaret has “cloaked” them all. They drive away in an invisible fire truck, heading to KCXE, her news station, which is broadcasting the beginning of WW3. The station manager immediately cooperates with everything Margaret tells him to do. Noah gets to work cutting the power for the building before they can broadcast anything.
The power at the station goes off, and the emergency generator comes on. They cut the generator off just as Margaret’s about to go live. Jane sneaks in and gives Margaret one of the devices, which powers up all the equipment for her. Noah doesn’t make any move to stop her, so she goes live on the air with lots of video footage of alien stuff. All the news outlets in the world immediately start showing the footage, without any kind of verification at all.
At the station, Hugo’s men wheel something in. It’s a very old alien and it has a message for us…
Brian’s Commentary
This is in no way “Horror,” but it’s billed as an alien invasion film, so we went with it anyway. The alien CGI was surprisingly not-s0-great, like something from twenty years ago. The pacing was OK for such a long film, and it didn’t get boring.
The first hour kept reminding me of the weirdness that was the first half of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” (1977). Later, it became more like “E.T.” in a lot of ways, but it’s also very different from both.
Somehow, I doubt the news agencies would be that quick to show all the footage without any kind of verification. It could simply be a big hoax; they wouldn’t know. Also, why did Noah just give up right at the end? His assistant, Boyd, was ready to stop the broadcast, and he could have just shot everyone, but no, he just let it go.
It’s fine. I’d have been way more interested in seeing the aftermath of all this; what effect did the revelation have on everyone? We don’t know much about the aliens or what their message was.
It’s long, but it gives us way too much about what we didn’t need and not enough about what we wanted to know. They should have done the disclosure at the halfway point and showed us what came after.
Kevin’s Commentary
I’m going to go with well made, because of course after 30-some movies Spielberg knows how to make them, and also mediocre. It trots along for an awfully long time being somewhat interesting but mostly nothing that we haven’t seen before. The acting is great. The script didn’t impress me. There were a lot of plot holes and things that worked out fine because the plot required it.
Maybe the CGI looked better on the big screen rather than being so blatant for home viewing?
It was just okay overall. I would have rather seen an hour less of the first part of the movie and more tacked on at the end after the actual disclosure.
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