Believe it or not, I was not looking forward to the seventh Mission Impossible movie.. I enjoyed the last entry in this franchise, Mission Impossible: Fallout but the main thing I remember about it is the best use of Henry Cavill so far in his career – as a villain with a 70’s adult film star mustache. He was having more fun than anyone in the movie and that was where I finally got what Henry Cavill’s appeal was. And he’s not in this one. And Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning: Part One is 2 hours and 43 mins long. And it’s a part one. This film doesn’t have an ending. And yet…I had an absolutely terrific time with this film. There is something to be said about the power of low expectations.

Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is back, yet again, this time tasked to track down a dangerous AI that has become sentient and threatens to destroy the world if found in the wrong hands. Figures from Hunt’s past with whom he has unfinished business start to emerge. New characters are introduced. And there’s lots of explosions and ticking clocks and people running across the globe whose lives are in peril.

Tom Cruise is just so damn good at the big-budget practical effects summer blockbuster by now. Much has been said about how the actor does all of his own stunts, and judging by what is on display here, this is no easy feat. The non-CGI-ness of it all really adds something to the stakes of the proceedings. At many points throughout, I found myself holding my breath, gasping or otherwise on the edge of my seat. This, like last year’s Top Gun: Maverick feels genetically engineered to be the biggest kind of crowd pleaser imaginable. To reach every kind of audience and show everyone a good time. And I think it does.

It also helps that this is not just Cruise’s movie. We get good material out of all the series regulars, and there’s more of a team vibe to this one. Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, Vanessa Kirby, Rebecca Ferguson and Henry Czerny are all back and all have good moments. A standout is series newcomer Hayley Atwell, who it turns out was wildly underused in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Fellow MCU actress Pom Klementieff is also a newbie here, and she makes a strong impression as well. But like I said, the main reason you go to this is to watch Tom Cruise put himself in these harrowing life-or-death scenarios. And the scene played multiple times from the trailer involving Cruise flying a motorcycle off a cliff is only the beginning.

Director Christopher McQuarrie, who has made these since 2011’s Rogue Nation, returns and his keen eye for action sequences is still in full effect. He co-writes this time with Erik Jendresen, and the story is a little ridiculous this time. For a movie about how Artificial Intelligence is dangerous and bad, the movie all about pauses to give us a commercial for BMW’s new self-driving car because oh, look how cool that is. I will say the film appears to be in on its own joke enough, and it is self-aware enough to keep this from being a slog. There are some unexpected laughs and the stakes are genuinely heartfelt this time, allowing for some nice emotional beats that land the way they should.

Does the viewer feel the bloated 163 minute runtime? I gotta say, not really. Once you get into this story, which, to be fair, takes a while, it holds you in a pretty tight grip. We get an opening titles sequence about 30 minutes into the narrative, and by that point I was sold. There’s an insane level of technical wizardry put into the action sequences here, also as I said, there’s some unexpected emotional heft and humor to the proceedings, which I found surprisingly refreshing. And the “part one”-ness of it all isn’t really a detracting factor. This feels like enough of a narrative to fill its own movie, although we are left hanging to see what happens next. Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One is a Top Shelf Summer Movie of the highest caliber, and I won’t even be annoyed when it makes a billion dollars over the next month or two.