Tom Cruise vs. AI: Can the last movie star defeat computer villain?

Following last year’s smash “Top Gun” sequel, Tom Cruise was championed as the savior of the theatrical moviegoing experience. The title of his new blockbuster, “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One,” could therefore be interpreted literally. Can Cruise once again surmount the impossible and rescue moviegoing from its doomsday reckoning?

Actually, I think all the talk about Cruise saving Hollywood is overblown. The day he appears in a low-budget indie film and that film becomes a smash hit is the day I will believe the movie business is truly back.

But big or small, you still have to deliver the goods, as the mediocre returns for the so-so new “Indiana Jones” movie demonstrate. Directed by Christopher McQuarrie and co-written with Erik Jendresen, the new “Mission: Impossible,” while not peerless entertainment, is a much better sequel. When not bogged down by unnecessary exposition – really, who bothers to follow the plot of these movies anyway? – it’s a giddy, globe-spanning thrill ride.

To reiterate, this seventh installment in the “MI” franchise, which began in 1996, is only Part One. That means it’s basically a glorified teaser. (Part Two reportedly comes out next summer.) But some of the teases can stand – or fly, or speed race – on their own. Whenever the movie went into full throttle, which was about half the time, I gladly settled into that comfort zone of knowing I was being well taken care of by Hollywood action filmmaking at its techno best.

Paramount Pictures/Skydance

Esai Morales and Tom Cruise perform a breathtaking battle scene in “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One.”

Unlike the latest Indy movie, which overworks the nostalgia angle, or the Daniel Craig “James Bond” movies, which turned 007 into a brutal cipher, “MI” pretty much sticks to the same formula it has engineered for the past three decades: Confront the impossible, vanquish the unvanquishable, and win the day.

The one big twist this time around is that the central villain is not some person or country but a thing – a malevolent sentient artificial intelligence program dubbed “the Entity.” It can stealthily infiltrate any operating system and thereby control the world. With all the unsettling talk these days about AI, this particular species of villainy lends the film a new-style dose of pulp paranoia. Who or what is behind the AI is apparently a matter for Part Two, but the mission – or Mission – here is to head that catastrophe off at the pass.

Enter Cruise’s Ethan Hunt and his Impossible Missions Force (IMF) team: Luther (Ving Rhames), Benji (Simon Pegg), and – belatedly – Ilsa (Rebecca Ferguson). Luther, warning Ethan about the Entity, has the film’s best line: “You’re playing four-dimensional chess with an algorithm!”

The CIA, headed by Ethan’s former handler Kittridge (Henry Czerny), wants Ethan to claim the Entity for the home team. But since Ethan wouldn’t be Ethan without going rogue, he decides instead to destroy it. Along the way, he tangles with the empathy-free Gabriel (Esai Morales), who apparently is on intimate terms with the AI, as well as with Gabriel’s blond henchwoman Paris (Pom Klementieff). The arms dealer White Widow (Vanessa Kirby) makes a return appearance. The most welcome addition is Grace (Hayley Atwell), the ace pickpocket who pockets more than she bargained for.

She reluctantly joins the IMF team, although, as is true of practically all the “MI” movies, as opposed to, say, the Bond films, there is hardly a hint of sexual tension.

The film’s standout centerpiece, breathtakingly performed and shot, is an extended fight scene featuring cutthroat calisthenics between Ethan and Gabriel aboard a runaway Orient Express train. And yes, Cruise does his own stunts, as when he motorbikes off a 400-foot cliff and parachutes onto that train. Sure it’s impressive, but should we really be encouraging such folly? No doubt the movie studio’s insurance company is asking the same question. I shudder to think how Cruise plans to top it in Part Two.

Peter Rainer is the Monitor’s film critic. “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One” is rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, some language, and suggestive material.