And what a script Mr. Koepp has shat out; Inconsistent, nonsensical, garbled, clichéd shit. You could say its heart is in the right place, what with singling out empathy as needed in this shitshow of a world we're existing in, but the messaging is so garbled nothing registers.
Two people (Emily Blunt and Josh O'Connor) are singled out to bring the message that the aliens are among us, and fight against a shady corporation run by Colin Firth that somehow holds a monopoly on alien tech and information. I've long maintained most conspiracy theories are impossible in our world because they'd require a baseline of competence, and the bad guys in this movie make a pretty good case for me; They are fucking incompetent, from top to bottom. Their hapless, inconsistent flailing quickly made me lose any faith in the plotting; Are they competent shoot-to-kill operatives or bungling idiots? Whatever the scene needs that won't derail what passes for a story, of course.
It's all extremely poorly sketched out; The alien technology and powers are inconsistent, the characters paper-thin, and the moralizing and philosophizing superficial and extremely on the nose. We're left with some pretty great direction and cinematography, as you'd expect from this director and Janusz Kaminski, but even Spielberg's famous visual storytelling instincts fail to prop up the brain-dead set pieces.
This is not science fiction; This is what happens when you make a film based on faith rather than on a good story. It's basically listening to some moron yelling in your ear "but the Rosswell tapes were real, you guys!" for more than two hours.
It felt a lot longer.