Review: With 'Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning, Part One,' the action franchise hits all the right buttons

For a franchise I didn’t particularly like when it started, I must admit that the “Mission: Impossible” films have become the most reliably thrilling blockbusters out there — the latest, with the subtitle “Dead Reckoning, Part One,” among them, and it’s all because of star Tom Cruise’s willingness to risk life and limb for a good stunt.

I disliked the first “Mission: Impossible” movie, back in 1996, because director Brian de Palma let his cinematic ego get in the way of the excitement — and because, as a fan of the ‘60s TV series, I was torqued that they made the old show’s main character a villain. (Sorry, it’s been 27 years, and there’s a statute of limitations on spoiler alerts.)

After experimenting with a slew of hot-shot A-list directors — John Woo, J.J. Abrams and Brad Bird — who each put their spin on things, the franchise settled down with Christopher McQuarrie, who has been steadily building something spectacular. Think of the “Mission: Impossible” franchise as the thinking person’s “Fast & Furious.”

This time out, Ethan Hunt has been given a mission by the new CIA boss, Eugene Kittridge — played by Henry Czerny, returning to the franchise for the first time since the original in ’96. The mission is to find and steal two halves of a cross-shaped key. What it unlocks, Kittridge doesn’t say. He also doesn’t say much about who else may be looking for it.

Ethan and his stalwart Impossible Missions Force colleagues — tech wizards Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg) and Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames) — start their search at the airport in Dubai. They find someone with a part of the key, but they also find a clever pickpocket, Grace (Hayley Atwell), pinching it before Ethan gets to it. Ethan also finds two American intelligence agents (Shea Whigham and Greg Tarzan Davis) on his trail, and a shadowy figure, Gabriel (Esai Morales), who has a dark connection to Ethan’s past.

After a few minutes — which are spent dealing with a nuclear bomb scare and the return of Ethan’s past associate, the former MI-6 agent Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) — we start to understand a few things about Gabriel. One is that he has an assassin on his payroll named Paris (played by Pom Klementieff, in a role miles away from her comical Mantis in the “Guardians of the Galaxy” films). The other is that he’s working at the behest of a vast digital network called The Entity, and that the destruction of The Entity is now Ethan’s top priority — thus showing that McQuarrie and co-screenwriter Erik Jendresen were way ahead of the Writers Guild of America in warning about the dangers of an out-of-control AI.

It’s a weird coincidence that two of this movie’s biggest set pieces echo scenes from this summer’s other blockbusters — a car chase on Rome’s Spanish Steps (which they did in “Fast X”) and a train heading for a bridge about to explode (as seen in “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny”). It speaks to McQuarrie’s skill as an action director that both stunts, particularly the gravity-defying train sequence, work much better here.

The emotional heart of the movie, though, is Ethan’s byplay with his team, particularly the women. Ethan and Faust (who was featured in “Rogue Nation” and “Fallout,” the last two “M:I” movie) are veterans of this spy game, each knowing the sacrifices they have made for their work — and that the ultimate sacrifice, their lives, may be around the corner. And Ethan’s interactions with Grace, and the suggestion that he could be recruiting her to become the newest member of the IMF, are a fascinating mirror for Ethan’s psyche, as Gabriel’s appearance makes him think back to his origin story.

It’s also to Cruise’s credit that the marketing for this installment is up front about it being the first of a two-part story — something ticket buyers for “Dune” only learned when the movie started, and fans of “Fast X” and “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” didn’t discover until the credits rolled. It will be a year before “Dead Reckoning, Part Two” arrives, and all indications from this chapter indicate it will be worth the wait.

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‘Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning, Part One’

★★★1/2

Opens Wednesday, July 12, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, some language and suggestive material. Running time: 163 minutes.