PLANES, TRAINS AND AUTOMOBILES (MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: DEAD RECKONING PART ONE)

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Now this is how you do it.

Just when we have begun to despair about the glut of bloated Hollywood blockbusters on our cinema screens, along comes a 'Mission Impossible' movie that somehow manages to justify every second of its 163 minutes running time.

'Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One' is the seventh film in the Paramount Pictures' spy franchise.

It's the fourth to involve frequent Tom Cruise collaborator Christopher McQuarrie - having previously been involved as a writer in 2011's 'Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol' and as the director of 2015's 'Mission Impossible - Rogue Nation' and 2018's 'Mission Impossible - Fallout'.

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And just like those films, it's a thrill ride that's extremely silly and enjoyably so.

Cruise returns as Ethan Hunt, the Impossible Mission Force (IMF) agent who always puts his body on the line while operating in the shadows, even when other people his age are busy looking at their pension pots.

At the start of McQuarrie's movie, we see a Russian submarine crew gloating about their slick vessel, the Sevastopol and lts ability to go around the world's oceans undetected.

But their bumming and blowing soon stops when they encounter another phantom submarine.

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Unnerved by the way the phantom submarine messes with their radar, the Sevastopol's crew launch a torpedo.

However they quickly have to abort the attack when the submarine disappears from their screens, only for their missile to strike their own vessel.

It turns out the Sevastapol has a AI system known as The Entity which appears to have gone rogue.

Only Esai Morales' terrorist Gabriel seems to really have a proper handle on its frightening potential.

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As the crew of the Sevastapol float in the ocean, a cruciform key used to control The Entity becomes a highly cherished prize in the intelligence community.

The world's superpowers all want to retrieve its two component parts.

But so does Gabriel.

One of those parts of the key, however, has fallen into the hands of one of Ethan Hunt's fellow IMF operatives, Rebecca Ferguson's rogue MI6 agent Ilsa Faust.

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Hunt is dispatched to the Arabian Peninsula's Empty Quarter to thwart an attempt to assassinate Ilsa and retrieve her half of the cruciform key.

After disrupting the desert attack, he returns to the US and penetrates an intelligence briefing by Henry Czerny's CIA bigwig Eugene Kittridge.

The briefing includes Cary Elwes' Director of National Intelligence known simply as Dellinger and other unnamed senior intelligence figures played by Indira Varma, Rob Delaney, Mark Gatiss and Charles Parnell.

However as he wreaks havoc, it gives Hunt an insight into the importance of the cruciform key.

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Soon Hunt and his IMF colleagues, Ilsa Faust, Ving Rhames' computer whizz Luther Stickell and Simon Pegg's tech field agent Benji Dunn are off on a global trek that will take them to Dubai, Rome, Venice and the Austrian Alps.

Their paths will cross again with Vanessa Kirby's arms dealer Alanna Misopolis, AKA "The White Widow".

They will also be pursued by Shea Whigham's spectacularly inept CIA agent Jasper Briggs and his sidekick, Greg Tarzan Davis' Degas.

It will lead them too to Hayley Attwell's resourceful English pickpocket Grace, a Posh Spice lookalike.

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Most of all, it will ultimately lead inoo a confrontation with Gabriel and Pom Klementieff's athletic French assassin, Paris.

Gabriel and Ethan have a past, with flashbacks showing how the former murdered one of Ethan's nearest and dearest, Mariela Garriga's Marie.

This raises question marks about Ethan's ability to keep his emotions in check. 

But as the adventure wears on, it becomes apparent the IMF aren't just battling Gabriel but The Entity itself which has the capacity to alter reality and potentially destroy the planet.

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Will Ethan and the gang be able to keep Briggs at bay and stop Gabriel from getting his hands on the cruciform key?

Will the IMF also be able to get through the film without incurring any losses? 

Over the course of the three previous 'Mission Impossible' adventures they have previously collaborated on, McQuarrie and Cruise have consistently delivered rollicking adventures that have more than held their own against James Bond, Jack Ryan and Jason Bourne.

In fact, very often they have set the gold standard for spy adventures.

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'Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One' is no exception.

Fans of the franchise know they can expect outlandish stunts, car chases, epic fistfights and gun battles and that is exactly what we get.

However McQuarrie has also been particularly adept at stringing bravura set pieces together with ridiculous, edge of your seat plots that really understand the quirks of recurring characters and revel in them.

Unlike James Mangold's disappointing 'Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,' this instalment of the 'Mission Impossible' franchise never feels boring and each character contributes.

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In spite of its lengthy running time, it never drags and you feel invested in the characters to the extent that you're willing to overlook some of the gobbledygook that they speak and the fact that they are chasing the key to an AI system that none of them seems to understand.

A lot of this is down to Cruise's undoubted charisma and his impressive commitment to the lead role.

He may be 61 and fighting the ravages of age with his puffy face but you have to admire Cruise's willingness to go above and beyond the duties of a lead man by eagerly throwing himself into the many stunts and car chases in McQuarrie's film.

Those sequences include two spectacular car chases through the streets of Rome while handcuffed to Atwell, a motorbike pursuit of the Orient Express leading to a parachute jump and a fist fight on top of a speeding train.

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As usual, he is complemented by Pegg, Rhames and Ferguson who comfortably slot into their IMF roles.

Kirby remains a flirty delight as the White Widow, while Czerny makes a welcome return to the franchise, having only appeared as Kittridge once before in Brian de Palma's original 1996 adventure.

Attwell is a decent addition to the cast, while Morales and Klementieff have fun as thoroughly nasty villains.

Elwes, it has to be said, is a wee bit hammy but the ride McQuarrie and his special effects team take us on is so much fun you kind of let him away with it.

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Fans of the franchise will be glad to know that, writers and actors strike permitting, the second part of this particular 'Mission Impossible' adventure is die to hit multiplexes in the summer of 2024.

With Nick Offerman, Hannah Waddingham and Janet McTeer due to join the cast, expectations will be high after McQuarrie and Cruise have delivered what appears to be the best summer blockbuster of 2023.

Can Cruise and McQuarrie top this?

Who knows? But it's a mission which, thankfully, they seem willing to accept.

('Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One' was released in UK and Irish cinemas on July 10, 2023)