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Matt Damon is nice and all. Julia Stiles is pleasant in her way and Joan Allen exudes an interesting sort of steely toughness. But in the Bourne Ultimatum, these three are but planets orbiting the radiant magnificence of David Strathairn.

Strathairn is perhaps best known for his portrayal of Edward R. Murrow in George Clooney’s Good Night, and Good Luck, but he has been poking around in character roles and indy films for years. In the Bourne Ultimatum, he plays Noah Vosen, a high-level CIA operative who knows were the bodies are buried or, at least, where they were taken down by ruthless trained assassins. He is cold and hard, and Strathairn makes clear that, underneath this reserve, he enjoys his power just a little too much. As he explains the dark significance of the black ops Blackbriar program to fellow agent Pamela Landy (Allen), the faintest whisper of a near-smile plays across his lips. Strathairn captures perfectly the arc from smug triumph to defeated resignation when Vosen realizes that Landy has discovered and revealed his secrets. He elevates the part of the soulless bureaucrat, shading Vosen with tints of malice, desperation, panic, and even fear.

The subtlety that Strathairn brings to Vosen also characterizes the whole movie. With a restraint essentially unheard of in action films, director Paul Greengrass dares to hint at emotional undercurrents and then leave these suggestions hanging in the air. He allows, for example, a cryptic but suggestive exchange between logistics agent Nicky Parsons (Stiles) and the titular amnesiac killer (Damon) to go unexplained.

At the risk of over-interpreting (though something about the film does seem to invite associative thinking), it is this unconventional approach to the genre that makes the Bourne trilogy so compelling. Bourne is insecure, searching for himself. He is, in hyperbolic form, every one of us who has wondered if we are just a cog in some larger machine or feared that we are not our own self-made creations but instead the sum of others’ expectations for us. And in the Bourne movies, as in our own lives, questions sometimes go unanswered, connections flicker across our consciousnesses and then evaporate.

Bourne is us and we are Bourne. Just with a little less kicking ass.