Mission: Impossible - Fallout

Ironically, the most entertaining element of all may be the star's advancing age; Cruise, well into his 50s, scores numerous laughs as the increasingly confused CIA agent, leaping into one spectacular stunt after another and then wishing he hadn't.

The thought crosses the mind: Where can it go from here? The answer is pretty much everywhere. It keeps on going and going, following one exciting sequence with another and then another.

I stayed to the final credit, in case there was a clever tag, but I didn't feel cheated when there wasn't one. I needed the time to catch my breath.

Mission: Impossible - Fallout is a delirious fantasy which delivers a super-sized kick.

Mission Impossible is the greatest film franchise in cinematic history

F. Scott Fitzgerald said "action is character" -- which, if true, means the Ethan Hunt we see in Fallout is the most complex movie character of all time.

Everyone else may be in it for the spectacle (the stunts, the foreign locations, the outfits), but for me, even in an action movie, the story is everything, and I needed a break to get through this one.

By 2018, a franchise that began with Tom Cruise dangling from the ceiling of a Langley vault was dangling him off a 1,981-foot-high cliff, illustrating how Mission Impossible’s stunts have only gotten bigger, bolder and more bonkers.

It didn’t seem like it was possible, but McQuarrie outdid himself and made an even better Mission: Impossible movie with Fallout.

Like with "Rogue Nation," the action choreography of the combat sequences is sublime, combining aggressive attacks and defenses with the kind of precision and grace you can only find in dance.