June 11, 2026
Cybersecurity expert Daniel Kellner (Josh O'Connor) is being hunted down by a covert agency called Wardex, led by Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth). Kellner had stolen a set of files which he had to deliver to Hugo (Colman Domingo), and Wardex wants them back. Wardex had technology which allowed Scanlon to locate and talk to people remotely. Scanlon cannot connect with Daniel, so he instead connected with Daniel's girlfriend Jane (Eve Hewson).
In the meantime, Kansas City TV weather girl Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt) was having breakfast when a cardinal flew into their apartment and stared at her for sometime, until it was shooed away by her boyfriend Jackson (Wyatt Russell). After this, Margaret suddenly had the ability to speak in different foreign languages and to connect emotionally with people she never met. During her weather report on TV, she began talking in a strange clicking sound.
In his 50 years of making movies, Steven Spielberg has made a number of films about his fascination with alien lifeforms, including "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" (1977), "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial" (1982) and "War of the Worlds" (2005). Spielberg returns to this genre after 20 years, coming up with the story that David Koepp crafted into a screenplay and directing it with his signature engaging storytelling style and cinematic flair.
The main cast was A-list, among the busiest actors these days. Blunt's Margaret was initially light and comic, but she eventually became the heart of the story. O'Connor was relatively lower key but convincingly committed to his cause. Think what you may of Hugo's intentions, but Domingo played him like a saint. Firth gave Oscar-grade gravitas to the antagonist role. We needed more background on Hugo and Noah to understand their motives more.
This film was about people who believed that everyone in the world should know that extraterrestrials exist going up against people who wanted to hide the existence of extraterrestrial life on Earth. As Jane used to be a nun, a Catholic perspective was added into the mix, including a verse from Genesis that I had not heard quoted that way before. It presents a thought-provoking dilemma to us in terms of morality and ethics.
The first two hours had Daniel and Margaret running around Midwest states avoiding Wardex, with car chases and train crashes along the way. All this action built up momentum for the final climactic 30 minutes, capped by a wheelchair scene that can polarize its audience to thinking Spielberg was being profound, or silly. However after all that, Spielberg still forgot to tell us where the cardinal came from, its source of power and its selection criteria. 7/10
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