See Tom run. At some point fairly soon now, I would expect that Tom Cruise (age 57) will realize that he can't do all the action-star stunts that would be appropriate for a 30-year-old, including spending a lot of time sprinting here, there and everywhere on screen. Yes, he's got a good stride all right, but those scenes are so contrived that you get the feeling the production crews of his films must deliberately scout out locations that would look particularly photogenic for him to run through.

The thing is that Cruise is actually a very decent actor. He's got an easy, comfortable screen presence, and he's capable of turning in quite strong performances given a story and script that are not just setups for action scenes. I'm thinking of examples like Edge of Tomorrow, Oblivion, Magnolia, Jerry Maguire, Rain Man. He's never hard to watch. Some of us would really like to see him to get past the stunt movies and finally get back to doing things that (insert any other decent action star here) couldn't do just as well.

For the rest of the cast, Henry Cavill (who has a great voice and good delivery as well as that Superman body) turns in an interesting role -- he's one of the main reasons I went to see this in the theater. Michelle Monaghan and Rebecca Ferguson are both fine though they looked strikingly alike; they could have played sisters. Simon Pegg and Ving Rhames again do fine as the MI sidekicks but again they don't have as much to do as one would have liked. Everyone is subordinate to Cruise, and the script drives that home repeatedly.

So then we're left with the stunts themselves. If you mainly want a high-production thrill ride then this movie will do admirably. There's some kind of plot behind it but the explanatory details quickly get obscured in the imperatives of delivering high-octane, adeptly paced thrills. In short it's necessary for Ethan and his MI team to Save The World, what else do you need to know? Some beautiful scenery too deserves credit, both urban and mountainous. But the last 20-30 minutes went beyond impressive to being ludicrous. Sensory overload. And, there is actually no real suspense here because we know the heroes will triumph, maybe a little banged up, but that's all.

I still rate the first MI film as the best of the series. It was a good successor to the TV show, where the key feature was the intelligence and cleverness of its plotting, not somewhat mindless action. Generally I'd prefer action movies where the stunts take second place to the plot, not vice versa.

What if the latest MI movie opened on the same weekend as a new Bond film? They have become stylistically very similar and appeal to the same audiences. I imagine the answer would depend on which country you live in. But it would never happen.