SCI-FI; 2hr 25min
STARRING: Emily Blunt, Josh O’Connor, Colin Firth, Eve Hewson, Colman Domingo
Ride or die: Blunt and O’Connor
In the opening scenes of director Steven Spielberg’s burnished dystopic beauty, cybersecurity techs Daniel Kellner (O’Connor) and Hugo Wakefield (Domingo) are sitting on a stolen cache of classified US government secrets detailing the mistreatment of extra-terrestrials for post-Roswell decades — secrets they believe the entire population of the planet is entitled to share. Like, today.
Since their erstwhile employer and covert government agency, the Wardex Corporation, is not remotely on board with this noble sentiment (a professionally incensed Firth is its head honcho, Noah Scanlon), Hugo and his fellow rebels are bunkered down in a warehouse while accused spy Daniel is on the run with the stolen info in hand and his luckless girlfriend, Jane Blankenship (Hewson), riding shotgun.
While that hot mess is happening, after making eye-contact with a cardinal bird, Kansas City TV weather forecaster Margaret Fairchild (Blunt) is suddenly able to speak fluent Russian and Korean, and to read random people’s minds. This also fails to sit well with Noah.
Get set for the rest, because Jurassic Park screenwriter David Koepp has barely got his groove going: although Daniel and Margaret have never met, Daniel, too, is an unwitting “passenger” for alien intelligence, while a traumatised Jane is being diabolically manipulated by Noah via an unearthly “device.” Oof!
What we have here, to cut to Koepp’s express chase, is a race to a fantastical finish line that poses pivotal questions about the nature of existence and belief. Margaret and Daniel’s arrival at a shared understanding of how they came to be the conduits they now are delivers all the pay-offs you expect from show-pony cinema: visceral thrills, propulsive conflict, bravura performances from Blunt and Co and an ending designed to melt the heart.
