Let’s get one thing straight. This will be Tom Cruise’s final Mission: Impossible movie. Unless of course it turns out not to be. Also, this prediction will self-destruct in five seconds.

Granted, there is a sense of completeness in that subtitle — The Final Reckoning — but also one of confusion, since this is the continuation of 2023’s Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One , but without the decency of being called Part Two. It is also, for those of you who miss the days of Roman-numbered franchises: M:I VIII.

The previous instalment ended with Cruise’s superspy Ethan Hunt in possession of a cruciform key that could be used to control — or destroy — an evil AI entity known as “the Entity.” (Not very creative, these AIs.)

Alas, the lock for this key was in a downed Russian submarine somewhere under the Bering Sea. Finding it is the kind of mission that could easily take almost three hours. But that’s what sequels are for!

Director Christopher McQuarrie returns for his fourth Mission feature. (He also made the 2012 Cruise movie Jack Reacher, presumably as a form of audition.) He opens with a greatest-hits montage over a message from the president (Angela Bassett), lest we forgot what a badass Ethan has been since the first Impossible film, now almost 30 years ago.

Next, the obligatory getting-the-band-back-together sequence, as Ethan reunites with Benji (Simon Pegg), Luther (Ving Rhames) and Grace (Hayley Atwell).

They’ll need all the team members’ skills and then some to defeat both the Entity and the evil Gabriel (Esai Morales), who no longer has the key but has stolen a digital poison pill that has to be combined with the AI’s source code to cut the Entity down to size. MacGuffins within MacGuffins …

It’s serious stuff, but not so serious that you can’t chuckle at it from time to time. I was chuffed to see “Gulf of Mexico” (not America) on a map wielded by the U.S. president, and amused that, after one ship is described onscreen as being “somewhere in the Atlantic,” the next one we see says “Location: Classified.” Come on, movie! We won’t tell!

But as with all the M:I movies, it’s the journey rather than the destination that matters, and this one doesn’t disappoint. Although I have to say it doesn’t quite match the summer-popcorn insanity of the last one, which featured a bonkers motorcycle jump, and that scene where the Orient Express falls to its doom: One. Railcar. At. A. Time. Ethan and Grace had to scramble to survive that from inside the train, at one point dodging a plummeting piano.

This one has an extended sequence of Cruise infiltrating the sunken Russian submarine, which decides to slowly roll over on the ocean bed like a restless sleeper, causing missiles and torpedoes to rattle around inside the hull like so much uncooked spaghetti. There’s also the bit promised by the posters – Gabriel and Ethan fighting in the sky, the latter clinging to the wing of an upside-down yellow biplane.

That’s an exciting scene, and Cruise somehow manages to make it look oddly realistic — there’s a moment where he’s trying to hook his leg over the edge of the cockpit to leverage himself inside, and you wonder if this 62-year-old can do it. And then you remember: Oh yeah, he’s Tom Cruise.

But the film also finds time for a bit of dialogue and emotion amid the spinning submarines and aircraft. There’s a lovely, moving speech by Rhames’ character, and a bit where Pegg’s fidgety genius is wounded and still manages to talk one character through a complex computing chore while telling another how to fix a collapsed lung — his own. It’s not quite doing rocket science and brain surgery at the same time, but it’s close.

Even the lesser characters get their moments, including newcomers like Nick Offerman as a hair-trigger general, Tramell Tillman (TV’s Severance) as the U.S. Navy’s coolest captain, and Katy O’Brian as an equally cool member of his crew. In fact, the biggest disappointment in the cast — and I’m going to chalk this up to writing — is Morales as the chief baddie, who seems to have little to do other than Be Evil.

There is also one wonderful, very deep-dive callback that I won’t reveal except to say that you’ll know him when you see him — and also that, if this is the final chapter in the series — well, there was no better time to bring him back.

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning opens May 23 in theatres.

3.5 stars out of 5