Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One  ★★★½

IF THEY had their time again, Chris McQuarrie and Erik Jendresen should have spent a little more time on their script for Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One.

It’s the one aspect that stops this seventh instalment from matching the last couple.

Like the film’s title, this seventh instalment in the series uses too many words to make its point.

The script causes the film to lag, at time significantly, as charters spend whole scenes trying to explain what is going on.

It doesn’t help that the main villain of the piece is something that we never see – an AI creation that has become sentient and is intent on doing something that I’ve forgotten the detail of.

This is a shame because, as usual, director  McQuarrie and his star Tom Cruise deliver some of the best action sequences in contemporary cinema, including a very inventive car chase, tension-filled train roof knife fight and a spectacular train destruction.

There is also Cruise’s typical hair-raising signature stunt, this time a motorcycle leap off a mountain and parachute drop, which apparently he executed a half dozen times.

Alongside Cruise, the returning support cast includes Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson and Vanessa Kirby, all of whom acquit themselves well.

Best of the newbies is Hayley Atwell playing a thief who inadvertently finds herself recruited into Etan Hunt’s mission to keep the AI out of the hands of various nefarious forces, including some within his own government.

Spectacular but flawed; let’s hope Part Two of the final instalment gets Hunt fully back on track.