Steven Spielberg has been directing feature films for more than 50 years, and yet his work still has a sense of wonder: a glowing, almost innocent belief in the prospect of a better world, and a quiet reveling in the idea that there are things we do not, and perhaps cannot, understand. His latest, “Disclosure Day,” lives in that space of the unknown. It mixes a few genres — science fiction, ...

Emily Blunt, left, and Josh O'Connor in "Disclosure Day."

Niko Tavernise/Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment/TNS

Steven Spielberg has been directing feature films for more than 50 years, and yet his work still has a sense of wonder: a glowing, almost innocent belief in the prospect of a better world, and a quiet reveling in the idea that there are things we do not, and perhaps cannot, understand.

His latest, “Disclosure Day,” lives in that space of the unknown. It mixes a few genres — science fiction, action, conspiracy thriller — with that trademark Spielbergian shimmer, and the result is the kind of smart summer movie that’s absolutely worth the overpriced popcorn. We are not alone, this movie tells us — not just referring to other worlds, but to this one, where a comforting hand to hold is always closer than we think.

A sort of bookend, many decades later, to the director’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “Disclosure Day” brings together two people who don’t know each other, but who share something mysterious in their past. Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt) is an ambitious TV meteorologist in Kansas City who dreams of bigger and better things — only to get what she wishes for, in the strangest of ways, when she begins to realize that she knows things she doesn’t understand, and that she is somehow able to become what people need her to be. (“I look at someone, and I just drop in on them,” she says, sweetly puzzled.) Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor) is a cybersecurity expert who works for a shadowy government agency and has learned some secrets about unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs, aka UFOs) that he’d like to share with the world. But as the movie begins, he’s on the run with his girlfriend Jane Blankenship (Eve Hewson), pursued by a team of agents determined to stop him, even as the world faces the brink of another war.

Spielberg, as always surrounded by an elite team of film artists (Janusz Kaminski’s cinematography — particularly a gorgeous shot where Blunt’s head, mirrored in glass, superimposes on someone else’s — is poetry on screen), gives us our share of big-movie thrills. Multiple car chases keep us breathless, and there’s a sequence involving two cars and two fast-moving trains that’s so “Mission: Impossible”-esque I wondered if Tom Cruise might pop by.

But “Disclosure Day” isn’t really about the action, exemplary as it is; it’s about connection — human and otherwise — and about Margaret and Daniel slowly realizing what they know, and how they can use that knowledge for good. David Koepp’s screenplay keeps us in the shadows for a while; we don’t immediately understand exactly what Daniel has stolen and what it means, and a reveal late in the movie is breathtakingly emotional. We see people around the world gazing at their screens in awe — a mirror of ourselves, sitting rapt in the theater as Spielberg’s story wraps around us.

And the actors are a joy. I hadn’t realized that I’ve long wanted to see Colman Domingo and Colin Firth face off, their velvet voices creating dusky music; sometimes movies give you unanticipated gifts. Hewson’s Jane, a deeply spiritual woman, is the movie’s quiet heart, speaking volumes with her expressive eyes. O’Connor, playing a genius everyman, is all determination; Daniel knows he’s doing the right thing, even as chaos explodes around him. And Blunt, who’s got a delicate, otherworldly quality that movies haven’t often captured, makes Margaret both amusingly dippy and softly soulful, haunted by a trauma in her past. Unafraid to run toward the unknown — “I’ve just been kind of rolling with it,” she says of her strange abilities — she embodies Spielberg’s gentle message. Don’t be afraid, this wise movie tells us, of what we don’t yet know.

———

'DISCLOSURE DAY'

4 stars (out of 4)

MPA rating: PG-13 (for action/violence, some bloody images and strong language)

Running time: 2:25

How to watch: In theaters June 12

———