Lisa Johnson Mandell’s Disclosure Day review reveals that while not up to Spielberg’s astronomical standards, it’s still masterfully crafted and leaves you with much to contemplate.

Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day takes some processing.

Here you have a film gift-wrapped in craft, loaded with genuine emotion and ambition, and by some actors doing some of the finest work of their careers. And yet…

It somehow manages to leave you less than giddy.

It’s provocative, it’s frequently dazzling, and it is — on some levels — the work of a master still very much in command of his seminal storytelling craft. But it is also, I’m sorry to report, not among Spielberg’s greats.

The film begins by dropping viewers into dark, mid-scene, mid-crisis, mid-chaos. It appears to be a kidnapping and ransom situation of some urgent, geopolitical weight. The film is in no hurry to give us the details or reveal the import and relationships of the characters. This is entirely by design and adds to the intensity until it becomes rather confusing.

Screenwriter David Koepp, a Spielberg collaborator of long and distinguished standing (Jurassic Park, War of the Worlds, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull), has constructed a script that withholds information the way a good magician withholds the ending of a trick. We, the audience, know exactly as much as the characters do, and after awhile it gets a bit frustrating that none of us are really clued in.

It is a genuinely original storytelling device. But it is also, at times, a genuinely maddening one.

Disclosure Day review — what’s it all about?

As the film unfolds, layer by careful layer, the shape of the conflict gradually comes into focus. There are, broadly speaking, two factions at war. On one side, a shadowy, powerful coalition of interests is committed to the suppression of a truth that has apparently been sitting in government vaults for decades: that extraterrestrial life is not only real, but has been in contact with our world.

The other side is a smaller, more fractious group of idealists, whistleblowers, and true believers who are equally committed to getting that truth into the hands of the eight billion people who, they argue, have every right to it. The film’s energy at times two  ricochets between those two forces, at times not. Into this volatile equation, the extraterrestrials themselves have apparently inserted a wildcard. They have selected two individuals — chosen, not recruited; compelled, not volunteered — to serve as conduits for their communication. These are not spokespeople, but more like vessels or intermediaries.

One of them is played by Emily Blunt, who is spectacular. The moments in which her character becomes a channel for something beyond herself are among the most quietly extraordinary sequences Spielberg has put on screen in years. She is the soul of this film.

The other is played by Josh O’Conner. Colin Firth, Colman Domingo and Eve Hewson give it their all.

Running in the background of the conspiratorial intrigue is a subplot about the world on the brink of WWIII. Tensions are rising, alliances are fracturing, and humanity is, as a species, in no particularly receptive mood for revelations of the cosmic variety. The movie would have been fine without this subplot — it’s undercooked, and it feels like a needless distraction from the film’s true trajectory.

Another puzzling feature involves the film’s alien infiltrated animals — creatures through which the extraterrestrials elect to communicate with humanity because they’re warm and fuzzy and not scary. They are rendered in CGI that is not up to the standards of a Spielberg film, and it’s a little disconcerting.

But when Disclosure Day unleashes what the master does best;  sustained, kinetic, viscerally intelligent filmmaking — it is breathtaking. The car/train scene is right up there with the best and most breathtaking action scenes we’ve almost taken for granted from him. Heart pounding cheers break forth.

Credit where credit is due: cinematographer Janusz Kamiński shoots every frame with the authority of someone who has long since stopped needing to prove himself and is simply, gloriously, doing the work. He is fabulous, as always.

Which makes it all the more frustrating that the film’s final act takes quite so long to arrive — and, when it does, it delivers something quieter and more muted than the preceding two hours have promised.

In certain respects, the ending is genuinely thought-provoking — after processing it for a good 24-hours, I liked it more and more.

The day after I attended the screening, I ran into a guy, maybe in his 40’s, who told me he hadn’t been in a theater since Titanic, but he couldn’t wait to see Disclosure Day. It seems he had worked for the military, and was responsible for uploading information about alien interactions that would blow your mind. He was on the side of the disclosers.

When I thought about the film through his eyes, I immediately knew he would see it as the revealing masterpiece he’d been waiting for.

Disclosure Day is not without its merits. But it’s also not Close Encounters, Minority Report, and nowhere near E.T. But it is a serious, handsomely crafted, occasionally thrilling, film made by a director still operating at a level most of his peers will never reach.

Rated PG-13

2 Hours 25 Minutes

If this Disclosure Day review encourages you to hover over the cineplex and drop in to see it, get times and tickets at Fandango.com.

Lisa Johnson Mandell’s Disclosure Day review reveals that while not up to Spielberg’s astronomical standards, it’s still masterfully crafted and leaves you with much to contemplate.