For over a decade now, Tom Cruise and Christopher McQuarrie’s mission has been to up the ante on action movies. Following the smash success of 2022’s Top Gun: Maverick (which McQuarrie co-wrote), the two are back together as star and director in Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning, Part One, the latest in their Mission: Impossible team-ups that began with 2015’s Rogue Nation. While the title (in theaters July 12) might feel unwieldy, the film itself is anything but, its nearly three-hour running time passing as quickly as it takes a message to self-destruct.

Cruise is back as Ethan Hunt, the leader of the Impossible Mission Force, in the first of what is being billed as a potential two-part farewell to the character. When a sentient AI force nicknamed “the Entity” is at risk of falling into the wrong hands, Hunt is tasked with retrieving a two-part key essential to controlling (or destroying) it. With his reliable team, Luther (Ving Rhames), Benji (Simon Pegg), and now-mainstay Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson), Hunt sets out to track down the key and destroy it. A too-smart-for-her-own-good pickpocket, Grace (Hayley Atwell), adds chaos to the mix, as Ethan pursues a shadowy foe from his past, Gabriel (Esai Morales).

Tom Cruise in ‘Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning, Part One’. CHRISTIAN BLACK/PARAMOUNT PICTURES

The golden key is a solid movie McGuffin, with the ramifications of “the Entity” feeling eerily timely in a world where the role of AI in our lives is a hot button subject (particularly among those currently on strike in the film industry). But as always, it’s the action sequences, Cruise’s death-wish level stunts, and chemistry of the core ensemble that will keep audiences strapped in for the adrenaline ride.

After the high-water mark of 2018’s Mission: Impossible — Fallout, it seemed nigh impossible for Cruise and McQuarrie to outdo themselves. While Dead Reckoning is not a better film in totality, its action and thrills are next level. A car chase through a foreign city has become a signature centerpiece of the films, and this time it’s in Rome, complete with a tumble down the city’s iconic Spanish Steps and the terrifically funny inclusion of a Fiat (itself a winking nod to the Mini-Cooper chase of the original The Italian Job).

One might wonder — how many ways can you reimagine a car chase? But the Mission: Impossible franchise seems to have no shortage of inventiveness in that department. From the types of vehicles used to the added wrinkle of handcuffed drivers to the locale itself, the chase sequence in Dead Reckoning will keep audiences on the edge of their seats. McQuarrie puts us in the cars with our heroes, catching us equally off-guard as they are when a sudden obstacle appears. There’s some much-needed injections of levity among the thrills, as McQuarrie wisely understands the value of undercutting tension to give the audience a breath so he can more effectively ratchet it back up.

Hayley Atwell and Tom Cruise in ‘Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning, Part One’. PARAMOUNT PICTURES

Cruise is never more likable than he is as Ethan Hunt, a highly skilled agent whose greatest weakness is his love for his found family, the fellow members of his IMF team. McQuarrie is adept at balancing the character’s (and the actor’s) ability to hurl himself into danger, while also never failing to remind us of his humanity. (To whoever put Cruise in glasses, a vest, and rolled-up sleeves in an Italian library, my thirst for stern academics salutes you — the man has never looked hotter.)

In the last decade, Cruise has made a point of executing stunts himself, forgoing the use of visual effects whenever possible. Dead Reckoning features what Cruise calls his riskiest stunt yet and the culmination of his years of motorcycle riding onscreen. In the climax, Ethan pursues a train, attempting to climb aboard while it’s in motion. This necessitates that he ride a motorcycle off an extremely high cliff to free fall until he pulls his parachute. To say it’s anything short of miraculous would be a lie. It’s quite literally jaw-dropping. It’s hard to know whether to gape or to grab one’s face in abject terror as we watch the moment unfold. Only Cruise would try something so perilous for the sake of our entertainment — and it’s hard not to be impressed by the foolhardiness and bravery of such a move.

Tom Cruise, Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames and Rebecca Ferguson in ‘Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning – Part One’. CHRISTIAN BLACK/PARAMOUNT PICTURES

Besides the Roman car chase and death-defying cliff jump, Dead Reckoning abounds with taut, nimbly drawn sequences — from a Lawrence of Arabia-esque sand dune shootout to an airport cat-and-mouse game to hand-to-hand combat amidst the canals of Venice. It all comes to a head in the film’s climax aboard the Orient Express that blends the suspense of North by Northwest with audacious action, namely a largely practical effects-laden crash and subsequent escape attempt. McQuarrie set out to pay tribute to the likes of Buster Keaton and David Lean with the crash sequence, and he achieves his goal and then some.

As is now the norm with this franchise, Dead Reckoning both offers new faces and brings back some familiar ones too. Vanessa Kirby returns with her odd combination of skittishness and ice-pick precision as the White Widow, as does Ferguson as Ilsa Faust, one of the best female characters in an action franchise ever. Here, Ilsa gets a Venice-set sword fight that is breathtaking in its skill and balletic grace, enhanced by Fraser Taggart’s cinematography that somehow consistently blends visceral danger with travelog.

Perhaps most welcome is Henry Czerny as the government’s Eugene Kittridge, a role he has not returned to since 1996’s original Mission: Impossible. His dry repartee with Ethan hasn’t lost a step in the years between, as he wrestles with trusting Ethan’s skills and his own position within U.S. intelligence. He’s somehow both oily and noble, his loyalties and values brilliantly opaque.

Greg Davis and Shea Whigham in ‘Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning, Part One’. CHRISTIAN BLACK/PARAMOUNT PICTURES

Both Shea Whigham and Pom Klementieff are superb additions. Whigham has a reputation for elevating everything he touches, and that’s no exception here as he provides abundant humor and a moral foil for Ethan as Jasper Briggs, a government agent intent on taking Ethan into custody at any cost. Klementieff features as assassin Paris, who largely exists with wordless menace and snarling bravado. She has the versatility and expressiveness of a silent film star, her presence no less engaging and frightening for her scant dialogue.

But the real jewel in the crown of this ensemble is Atwell, who plays the mercenary Grace with a doe-eyed confusion that belies her deep intelligence. Grace, as she quickly learns, is in way over her head with the IMF. But isn’t that the name of the game? They’re not the Impossible Mission Force for nothing. In some ways, Dead Reckoning seems to be setting up Grace as a potential successor to Ethan, and Atwell imbues her with her best Peggy Carter sass and know-how. She’s scrappy and resourceful if out of her depth, and it’s her narrative arc and Ethan’s directive about choices that provide the thematic heart of the film.

Hayley Atwell and Tom Cruise in ‘Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning, Part One’. PARAMOUNT PICTURES

Ethan Hunt, and the members of his team, have always been told that their missions are contingent on whether or not they choose to accept them. Choice, then, is vital in the fight between good and evil and the shifting scales of world domination that make up the global stakes of the franchise. Dead Reckoning, though given the label “Part One,” is thankfully a complete film unto itself — but it also sets up the purported “culmination” of the series (or at least, Hunt’s role within it) that is to come in Part Two next year.

The fact that McQuarrie and Cruise routinely set and then raise the bar for the gold standard of action movies is the lure of the franchise — but it’s the characters, their foibles, their wit, and their deep humanity that are Mission: Impossible’s secret weapon. Ethan Hunt and the franchise at large remind us that our choices are what define us, if we only choose to accept the path laid before us. Grade: A-