Do you know how hard it is to find a decent pic of Ethan Hunt holding still?

You’ve seen the headlines. You’ve watched Tom Cruise all but jumping on his couch about it for years. You’ve seen the extended trailer that already spoiled the Scariest Motorcycle Jump by an A-List Actor Ever. At long last, Ethan Hunt is back! The series that tops itself every time is back with a sequel that took an entire pandemic to make!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: Mission: Impossible – Fallout was the best non-superhero blockbuster of 2018 and remains Henry Cavill’s best film to date. He’s not around anymore, but the stalwarts are back five years later with the weirdly punctuated Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One. We reunite with Cruise, action costar Rebecca Ferguson (now more prominent in Silo and Dune), frantic errand-runner Simon Pegg, and the rock-solid Ving Rhames, the only other veteran of all seven M:I installments. Still in charge is director/co-writer Christopher McQuarrie, having taken over the franchise in the same way that David Yates handled the last four Harry Potter films, except McQuarrie has no source material to adapt unless you count the original TV show that none of us under 60 have ever watched. Along with co-writer Erik Jendresen (Band of Brothers), McQuarrie lays out a new international obstacle course for Ethan, Ilsa, Benjy and Luther as they remind each other and us how the real impossible mission is the friends we make along the way. Friendship is a major theme this time, a quaint contrast to how Dom Toretto calls all his friends “Family™”.

Once again Cruise aims to bring millions of moviegoers together with a takedown of a villain everyone can hate. (Well, besides amoral tech-bros, who don’t count.) In Top Gun: Maverick our antagonist was a nameless, faceless rogue nation that substituted mountains and missiles for a personality. Here, it’s a nameless, faceless graphic of the sort that just so happens to be Public Enemy #1 in today’s hot-topic discussion circles: an A.I.! Known only as the Entity (because of course an evil A.I. never reveals its true file name), it was coded long ago by dudes who never saw The Terminator — or who saw it but convinced themselves, “Sure, Skynet was a bad boy, but I can change it!” Such is the hubris of billions of failed relationships and other tyrannies since the dawn of time.

When first we glimpse the nascent Entity, it’s on double-top-secret lockdown in the heart of a Russian sub called the Sevastopol. Undersea storage would be a perfect form of airgapping if it weren’t for all the other computer systems on board. Cybernetic mischief ensues; yadda yadda yadda the Entity is out-‘n’-about in the free world and humanity may be doomed. But the Entity seemingly has a design flaw: it can be controlled. Just like the fabled Antikythera, whosoever acquires its two half-MacGuffins in a series of extended chase sequences across continents can wield its fantastical subgenre power and rule the world. In this case the fetch-quest objectives are two halves of a cruciform key designed for a manual lock that somehow subjugates the Entity’s sentience or whatever.

As you’d expect, only one man can lead the charge to stop it: the Impossible Mission Force’s top agent, aptly summed up as “a mind-reading, shapeshifting incarnation of chaos”. Ethan and the aforementioned coworkers who’ve survived all their set-pieces and contract negotiations to date choose to accept the mission as usual, with some help from a potential new friend: Marvel super-spy Agent Peggy Carter herself, Hayley Atwell as a freelance thief given far more screen time than she ever had outside her own TV show. Sometimes she’s a rival at cross-purposes on behalf of a mysterious employer; other times, she’s trapped with Ethan in various moments and can’t self-extract without a team-up. She tags along with Our Heroes traipsing around the world in search of the Cruciform’s halves, but she keeps switching sides like a flop-sweaty politician.

Interfering at all junctures is their lead opponent, a super-duper evil spy named Gabriel, played by Esai Morales (Ozark, Titans, a long way from La Bamba), a spook who’s been erased from all grids and who naturally has retconned ties to Ethan’s past. He’s constantly two steps ahead thanks to an unfair advantage: the Entity loves him best. They’re all but partnered and working together to catch that key, as if this next-gen HAL 9000 wants to be ruled. The worst part is, Our Heroes are the only party that wants to end the Entity: every other nation and agency on Earth — including Ethan’s own bosses — wants to make the Entity their ultimate weapon. Granted, we’re shown almost no other competitors actively in the race, but we’re told they’re out there somewhere, presumably eating the main cast’s dust.

(Everyone’s too nonstop rushed to pause and ask: if the Entity is already doing favors for Gabriel, why does he even need the key to control it? Why not simply stay a duo, leave its top-secret lock hidden forever, and skip the quest, especially if the Entity knows Gabriel poses no risk to itself? Or is this just sleight-of-hand to distract Gabriel or anyone else from surmising its true master plan? Food for thought for the finale.)

In the grand M:I./James Bond joint tradition, the road to victory leads all over the planet — the Arabian Desert (where Ethan contends with the second massive sandstorm in this series), Abu Dhabi (giving us a grand tour of their enormous airport), Rome (featuring the most delightfully hilarious M:I duel of all time, between a rampaging extra-armored Hummer and a much smaller, pluckier vehicle that’s its complete automotive opposite on every level), Venice (lots of cat-and-mouse pursuit in claustrophobic alleys), and the world-famous Orient Express, mobile setting for an extended train climax that trounces Indiana Jones’ most recent ride on the rails, one-ups Uncharted 2‘s vertiginous one-upping of The Lost World‘s cliff-dangling Best Scene, and nods vigorously toward Speed‘s final train-roof fight while one-upping that too, even sans height advantage. Cruise and McQuarrie’s pursuit for daredevil realism is so relentless and impeccably shot and re-shot, the viewer is too awestruck to look for evidence of digital guardrails, especially when it’s all overwhelming you on the big screen.

Seven films in, Cruise is now 61, closing in on his Social Security years, yet nearly 20 years younger than Harrison Ford. Except for a few split-second flashback moments — not an entire 20-minute throwback to his ’80s prime filtered through PS4 cutscenes — Cruise is preserved and toned only through his freaky lifestyle that looks more natural and less distracting on camera than Young Artificial Jones did. Ethan has noticeably weathered over the decades, but he’s still got the stunt-work chops and the pro stunt-folks to back him up. Through every bone-rattling crash, aerodynamic vehicle pirouette, Olympian chasm leap, obligatory long-distance run, and showcase of latest additions to his vast cinematic motorcycle collection, Cruise still delivers that ol’ jaw-dropping death-defiance that give aneurysms to Paramount’s insurance companies, and tries with Herculean might to convince us there’s a chance he might actually die. I expect he’ll be at his most believably endangered in the series finale.

One of the more underrated qualities of the last few films is that, front-and-center Cruise notwithstanding, every cast member who get three or more lines also gets to take turns having upstanding moments to call their own — the Big Bad, Our Heroes, side villains, meddlesome law enforcers, their respective sidekicks, everyone. I’m most partial to Ferguson from her past accomplishments and latest projects (Silo has been especially fascinating), but Atwell brings a fresh, ambiguously self-centered perspective that’s among the more intriguing subplots as the Cruciform tug-of-war aggravates her trust issues (you hardly feel any sense of hackneyed everyday greed). In still other scenes she defers to another returnee, Vanessa Kirby as the White Widow, the shady arms dealer introduced in Fallout. She reemerges late into the fray at a neon-overloaded club party (not unlike John Wick 4‘s Berlin shindig) and, through a spoiler-tastic turn or two, reminds me how much I miss her Princess Margaret on The Crown.

If you’ve already followed Ethan’s every adventure to the theater, M:I-DRPO gives nary a reason for fans to unbuckle and dive for the escape hatch now. When the time comes for my usual annual film ranking, it’ll be docked points for the cliffhanger ending, but kudos to McQuarrie for interpreting that phrase literally, and as sensationally as possible.

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Meanwhile in the customary MCC film breakdowns:

Hey, look, it’s that one actor!: Give yourself 1000 points if you remember Henry Czerny from the very, very first Mission: Impossible as IMF head Kittridge, who seemed totally a traitor till proven otherwise. Seen most recently in Scream VI, he’s bolder than ever and his every statesmanlike command and demand are perfect baubles of career-bureaucrat overconfidence. (His slow-burn speeches to Ethan are my favorite parts of the trailers.) Other familiar faces from our past include Frederick Schmidt (Metallo from The CW’s Supergirl) as the White Widow’s brother/bodyguard.

Newcomers include Guardians of the Galaxy‘s Pom Klementieff as Gabriel’s lead minion, a mostly silent assassin who dresses like a Gerard Way groupie and relishes the chance to cut loose (borderline demonic behind the wheel of that rhino-esque Hummer); Shea Whigham (another Agent Carter vet, among countless other supporting roles) as the US field agent duty-bound to keep getting in Ethan’s way; and Greg Tarzan Davis (Maverick‘s callsign Coyote) as Whigham’s young partner, who’s learning more on the job than Whigham realizes.

Annoying bureaucrats include Cary Elwes, the Dread Pirate Roberts himself; Sherlock‘s brotherly gadfly Mark Gatiss; Indira Varma (Luther, Obi-Wan Kenobi); Charles Parnell (Barry, The Mandalorian); and Rob Delaney (Deadpool 2, Black Mirror‘s “Joan is Awful”).

How about those end credits? No, there’s no scene after the Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One end credits, but for anyone worried about Our Heroes and Villains potentially causing millions of dollars in property damage to gloriously ancient Rome, a disclaimer assures us the willy-nilly Hummer/Fiat chase on, down, and through the 300-year-old “Spanish Steps” was totally not filmed on the real things. That particular demolition derby was held on soundstage substitutes, though one can just imagine Cruise pleading with Roman officials for hours in vain.

Also, supporters of the SAG-AFTRA strike that’s now in full swing can take note of every single working actor in the film and resolve to send them “Stay Strong!” Hallmark cards. Sadly, the end credits do not provide mailing addresses.