'Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One' review: Nobody does it better than Tom Cruise

Once again, Tom Cruise saves the world and the summer movie season in "Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One," now in theaters, where Cruise thinks we all need to be to get the most out of the slam-bang action miracles he's assembled to astonish us.

He's not wrong. Last year, Cruise's "Top Gun: Maverick" topped the worldwide box-office charts at $1.5 billion and won an Oscar nomination for Best Picture. "Dead Reckoning Part One" is not going to equal that commercial and critical jackpot. But for two hours and 43 minutes of pure cinematic pow, you've come to the right place.

This new mission is No. 7 in a franchise that began in 1996 and really hit its stride with 2015's "Rogue Nation" and 2018's "Fallout," both directed by Christopher McQuarrie, who also takes the reins with "Dead Reckoning Part One" and "Part Two," due next summer.

McQ, as he's known, deserves heaps of credit, but "Mission" is Cruise's baby all the way. At 61 -- and so not looking it -- the star is in the running, jumping, climbing, diving, flipping, fighting shape of his life as rogue IMF (Impossible Mission Force) undercover agent Ethan Hunt.

Hunt's new mission, should he decide to accept it (he always does), is to take on his most insidious enemy yet -- a faceless, soulless A.I. called "The Entity." As writers and actors continue to strike so artificial intelligence won't steal their jobs, here's a villain everyone can hiss. It's a flesh-and-blood man against a machine that lives in the cloud -- what could be more topical?

The Entity finds help in a terrorist named Gabriel (Esai Morales), and his even more threatening assistant, Paris (Pom Klementieff). The vixenish Vanessa Kirby returns as the White Widow, an arms dealer who plays so many sides against the middle we're not sure where she'll land.

As for Hunt, he relies on the human touch provided by regulars Luther (Ving Rhames) and Benji (Simon Pegg), plus British spy Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson). Their loyalty to each other is suffused with a sadness that comes from knowing their mission cuts them off from normal life.

Among the new additions, the sensational Hayley Atwell knocks it out of the park as a pickpocket named Grace. Atwell's bantering chemistry with Cruise is off the charts. And let's not forget the return of Henry Czerny as Eugene Kittridge, Hunt's former boss now heading up the CIA, who ties this new chapter to all the missions that preceded it.

Got that? Don't sweat it. What counts is not the heavy-handed exposition dump that sets up the plot, but Cruise using every muscle in his real body (no A.I. here) to leave audiences slack-jawed in wonder. The stunts Cruise executes here are spectacular in every sense of the word.

Best of all the insanely entertaining feats of derring-do -- besides the airport tangle of spies and Hunt and Grace handcuffed to each other behind the wheel in a Rome car chase to end all car chases -- is the palm-sweating motorcycle-parachute jump over an immense Norwegian canyon. Or maybe it's the fight atop a speeding Orient Express train about to derail in the most breathtaking fashion ever. Or maybe it's... you get my drift.

The blend of practical and digital effects in this movie puts to shame the usual overedited, computer-generated waste of pixels where you can't believe anything that's happening. I'm looking at you, "Fast X." Cruise makes believers of us all in "Dead Reckoning Part One."

OK, the rubber-mask gimmicks still don't work and "Part One" dawdles at the starting gate. But Cruise is practically willing us to get us back into theaters and buzzed on movies again. What are you waiting for? When it comes to impossible, nobody does it better than Cruise.