(We knew it would happen sooner or later, but this is the closest Cruise has come to making a movie where he fights the biblical God). Playing messenger to an AI capable of accessing any information and bending even the nature of truth, Gabriel becomes the Entity’s aptly-named archangel. Gabriel is a new addition to the Mission: Impossible roster, but thanks to some well-placed flashbacks – and a stone-cold, terrifying performance from Morales – he feels like he’s always been lurking in the shadows, lying in wait.

This time, he may have met his match: The Entity is the polar opposite of Hunt – an unthinking, unfeeling machine whose logic-first approach is at odds with Hunt’s empathy – and it’s found itself a human avatar to do its bidding, in the form of a terrorist named Gabriel (Esai Morales), a specter from Hunt’s past. As a man who saw his entire team gunned down in the first film, he’s always been torn between completing the mission at hand and ensuring his friends get out alive. But this well-oiled unit is also our hero’s weakness. The gang's all back together, from the irreverent Luther Stickle (Ving Rhames), to wisecracking Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg), to the mysterious Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson), now comfortably the only romantic interest whose lifestyle matches Hunt’s.

It isn’t long before one gets the impression that Cruise made Dead Reckoning out of an altruistic duty toward preserving classical, big-screen action cinema – and, of course, because he enjoys the sheer lunacy of practical stunt work – in an age when AI and algorithms have become existentially threatening to artistry itself. (McQuarrie even apes some of De Palma’s askew framing to enhance the intensity of his close-ups.) Cruise is an underrated actor, but his job here is made slightly easier since the movie’s subtext so closely aligns with his own anti-streaming credo as an actor and producer. Perhaps it’s the only thing he's capable of doing anymore, a story that Cruise expresses quietly amidst the movie’s bombast. He re-emerges both burdened and determined saving the world is something he must do, but this far into his career as a super-spy, it’s also something he wants to do. Every wall humanity has built quickly becomes a weakness, requiring Hunt to leave the shadows, lest control of the Entity fall into the wrong hands – which is to say, the hands of any individual or agency.

Right from the thrilling opening scene set aboard a Russian submarine, the Entity’s abilities seem almost supernatural, but they’re ultimately grounded in the ones and zeroes that dominate all modern life.

Modern combat versus all agents