TAKE THE LEAP WITH TOM CRUISE IN 'MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - DEAD RECKONING, PART ONE'

Wondering if you should choose to accept the latest "Mission: Impossible" entry? Maybe you're sick of all the bombast at the movie theater lately? Well, put it another way: Do you really want to disappoint Tom Cruise?

On the first day cameras were rolling for "Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning, Part One," Cruise drove a motorcycle off an actual 4,000-foot Norwegian cliff and then parachuted down. He did it for you. The least you can do to repay him is watch his movie, right?

If you do give in, you're in for a treat a heart-pounding, never dragging, mission accomplished that takes audiences from the frozen Bering Sea to the rooftop of Abu Dhabi International Airport and the narrow alleyways of Venice.

It's got plenty of facemasks being ripped off, a car chase through Rome, a shoot-out in the desert, a sword fight on a bridge and an intense, runaway train sequence that may top anything the franchise has ever produced.

"This is getting exciting," one character says early on and you'll heartily agree.

Christopher McQuarrie returns for the third time as director of the spy series - he also helped write Cruise's "Top Gun: Maverick" - and he's brought back love interest/spy Rebecca Ferguson, comic relief buddies Simon Pegg and Ving Rhames, Vanessa Kirby as The White Widow and Henry Czerny as slimy Eugene Kittridge.

Newcomers include Esai Morales as a very bad baddie and Pom Klementieff as his psychotic aide. Hayley Atwell also makes her impressive debut, playing a master thief and possible romantic partner for Cruise's Ethan Hunt. (If that makes too many love interests, you'd be right.)

The bad guy isn't a guy this time, it's a haywire form of conscious artificial intelligence that has infiltrated every nation's computer systems and represents a Hollywood fever dream of this emerging technology. (And maybe a swipe at CGI, too.)