Full disclosure: My mother worked on Mission Impossible — Fallout as a travel coordinator for Paramount Pictures. We watched the movie together on Saturday night and somehow her name wasn’t in the end credits. She handled that fact a lot better than I would have. For the record, she really enjoyed the end product. Her current assignment, because she chose to accept it, is the sequel to Top Gun.

MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: FALLOUT
***1/2 (out of four) stars

Out of the frying pan, into the fire. Out of the fire, into a forest fire. Out of the forest fire, into the epicenter of a nuclear explosion. Out of the epicenter of a … and, we get it. The details and shoot locations may change in this Mission Impossible series, but not the breathless style and execution of the storytelling. The latest, Mission Impossible — Fallout, is probably the best of six, though I’m not sure if that was due to the plot, or an admiration of Tom Cruise’s remarkable stunts through the streets of Paris and London and in the skies above.

Upon exiting the theater I googled if stunt performers have an Oscar category — perhaps a technical one, which is awarded in some junior varsity ceremony nobody sees — and to my surprise, they do not. The brave folks who put this one together deserve one, Tom Cruise included. It’s a “Holy shit did he just do that!?” movie. Computer generated imagery can create entire worlds now and some of that magic is used here, but perhaps this franchise will have a timeless quality to it in 50 years because yes, that’s really Cruise jumping out of a plane, long jumping from building to building in London, and sprinting like he always does, at spastic speed yet never truly looking like a spaz. After breaking his ankle during one stunt (I won’t give it away), which delayed filming, Cruise nonetheless soldiered on during the take and even let out a gasp of pain before limping out of frame. His fellow stunt people should call him Tom Bruise.

Now let’s consider the serpentine plot, because again, I am not totally convinced that was what won me over. The story has a McGuffin thingamajig. Three of them. Before the Mission Impossible theme and opening credits begin, the cold open has Ethan Hunt and his team (Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg) in search of three plutonium containers, quickly finding them, and then, having to choose between saving one of his men or securing the plutonium, well, you be you, Ethan Hunt.

And that’s the set-up. The CIA, MI:6 and even his IMF chief, played by that sly scene-stealer Alec Baldwin, ask aloud if Hunt is too good a man to sacrifice everything in order to complete a mission that’ll potentially save the lives of millions. Hunt and Co. discover the plutonium will be used by the Syndicate — a bunch of very bad guys from the previous movie Rogue Nation — to poison the water supply of Pakistan, India, and China (shout out, China market!). Those are the millions this go-around. So, this is very much a WHO DIES THIS TIME? sequel. The rest of the movie goes like this, and it’s by design: “Huh? What? A gun? He’s a who now? What side is she on?! How did she walk that off? Oh yeah! Off comes the mask, sucker!”

The franchise brought director Christopher McQuarrie back from Rogue Nation to helm Fallout, and that was a good choice, and not just for continuity’s sake. McQuarrie has to juggle hundreds of moving parts in locations across the globe, handle a few one-on-one scenes with the headliners (the speech the Syndicate leader, Solomon Lane, makes while tied to a chair stands out), and then somehow shoot a set piece that one-ups the moment Cruise hangs onto an Airbus A400M from Rogue Nation.

There are subtle admissions that Cruise/Hunt is aging, particularly when standing next to and fighting alongside Henry Cavill’s CIA character, who is clearly maintaining his Superman physique between tent-poles. A CIA honcho even tells Hunt’s boss “You use a scalpel, I use a hammer.” But at the end of Fallout, after all the hand-to-hand is over and Hunt lay in a hospital bed victorious, I wondered who amongst the superspies could beat him? Damon’s Jason Bourne? I think Hunt would whip him, straight up. Daniel Craig’s James Bond? That would be an epic blood bout and it might be scored a draw (the rival studios would never allow anything else), but when you consider the team backing up Hunt, in his ear and making him better, I still think Hunt would prevail. Perhaps Connery’s Bond would get lucky (RIP, Oddjob). Perhaps.

Still, there’s a strong possibility that Cruise, 55 years young when he shot Fallout, could continue these breakneck stunts at 60, when Connery’s Bond was long retired. Oprah rant aside, celebrity religion aside, Cruise is one of the hardest working men in movies, and it shows in his summer monster releases. And it sure as shit shows in his face whenever he runs.

One final note: You just know Pegg is having a blast in these Mission Impossible sequels. The self-professed movie nerd once explained in his old TV show Spaced that all men understand that when you use your hands as fake guns, other guys will instinctively shoot back with their own fake guns. There’s a boat escape scene in Fallout where Pegg can barely keep a shit-eating grin off his face. He is standing next to Marcellus Wallace from Pulp Fiction and Maverick from Top Gun in his own world-class shoot-em-up, the music is humming, and it all worked out exactly as planned.