Tom Cruise and Rebecca Ferguson in Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part One (Paramount Pictures)

The “Mission: Impossible” franchise loves pushing the action genre’s boundaries as much as it loves watching Tom Cruise run for his life, a combination that’s helped maintained its relevancy after 27 years. Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part One has somehow done it again. Its plot is grander, the set pieces more insane, and Cruise’s knack for performing death-defying stunts as Impossible Mission Force agent Ethan Hunt remains more applaud-worthy than ever. In other words, Dead Reckoning Part One is a goddamn blast.

But that’s to be expected of this franchise seven movies in, particularly in the Christopher McQuarrie era. What pushes Dead Reckoning a step further is how unusually timely it feels, even for an overt first chapter of the “Mission: Impossible” IP’s supposedly final act.

Its villain is certainly unique, pitting Hunt and longtime teammates Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames), Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg), and Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) against an artificial intelligence program known as the Entity. Created for government espionage purpose, it’s since gone rogue, capable of hacking into and manipulating any digital media, satellite, or databank to its heart’s content. Yet the world’s governments don’t want the Entity stopped. They want it tamed. The program is controlled by two halves of a key, and any nation that possesses the keys to its code can not only manipulate information, but shape the idea of truth itself.

True to its nature, Dead Reckoning kicks its globetrotting exploits into high gear and never stops. An airport heist mission to retrieve one of the keys quickly devolves into a high-stakes game of cat and mouse as Hunt ropes in a thief named Grace (Hayley Atwell) to assist him while evading two government agents under orders to catch Hunt for going rogue once again. The streets of Rome morph into hazardous racetracks for a dangerous car chase as Hunt and Grace—handcuffed for equal measure—outrun their pursuers in a dinky yellow Fiat 500, to both suspenseful and comedic effect. And of course, there’s the jaw-dropping collection of fights and escapades aboard a train in the final act, directly tying into that much-hyped trailer shot of Cruise motorcycling off a cliff with a 50-foot drop.

Perhaps for the first time since Mission Impossible 3, this story feels deeply personal. Not just for Hunt, who must confront his past—including original Mission: Impossible ex-IMF director Eugene Kittridge (Henry Czerny) and Mission: Impossible—Fallout arms dealer Alanna Mitsopolis (Vanessa Kirby)—but the film’s contemporary parallels too. Had Dead Reckoning come out just a few years ago, it’s AI threat would probably be seen as Terminator–lite, the kind of sci-fi nonsense that almost fits into the series’ worldbuilding of a spy agency whose signature gadgets are artificial face masks.

Not so in 2023, a year where ChatGPT, deep fakes, and AI-generated content has blurred the lines between real and fiction. The Entity not only manipulates camera shots, but mimics speech patterns in real time, creating a sense of gnawing unease as Hunt’s team finds its usual means of saving/hacking the world compromised. It’s creepy, but even more disturbing when you consider how much of this fantastical premise has since become real life.

Having just turned 61, Cruise somehow remains sprier than men half his age, able to punch, kick, drive, and run like hell across cities, landscapes, and moving vehicles with ease. It’s not as operatic as Keanu Reeves’s latest “John Wick” sequel or bombastic as Extraction 2, but one look at a Dead Reckoning fight scene immediately tells you it’s leaps and bounds over most of the competition. Fights are dynamic, comprehensive, and versatile, from claustrophobic hallways to the windy rooftops of train cars. While not everyone gets to fight in Dead Reckoning, everyone participating is giving 100 percent, clearly trying to match Cruise’s stamina whenever possible.

More importantly, “Mission: Impossible” raises the bar. In today’s Hollywood landscape, IP sequels are everywhere, but rarely do they succeed at pushing the medium further. Even the long-dominant Marvel Cinematic Universe has struggled to recapture its old magic beyond a handful of titles. Dead Reckoning works because it gets people hyped for cool stunts where Cruise puts his life on the line for our benefit, then repeatedly delivers on the payoff. Since his Burj Khalifa climb in Ghost Protocol more than a decade ago, that’s been the hook driving people to these sequels time and time again.

Like Fast X and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, Dead Reckoning is, by its own admission, just half a movie. But it’s an entertaining movie all the same, one that may potentially beat the gold standard of Fallout should Part Two surpass expectations next year. It sounds like an impossible task. Then again, overcoming the impossible remains Tom Cruise and Ethan Hunt’s specialty.