Agent Ethan Hunt and his team continue their battle against an all-powerful AI called The Entity.

Tom Cruise, Hayley Atwell, Simon Pegg, Esai Morales

PG-13 (some strong violence)

2:49

Area theaters

A thrilling jolt of pure summer fun.

Ah, what a joy it is to see Tom Cruise back on screen as agent Ethan Hunt in "Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning." There he is, clambering about on a biplane over South Africa, his latest piece of highly publicized stunt work. To make sure we know it’s really him, there’s a shot of his distorted face, cheeks billowing out with the air pressure — and he still looks like a total movie star. Who else could do that?

No one, that’s who.

"The Final Reckoning" ostensibly puts a cap on the "Mission: Impossible" franchise — this is episode eight — while burnishing Cruise’s legacy as our Last Movie Star. Confidently directed by Christopher McQuarrie, who’s been shepherding the franchise since 2015’s "Rogue Nation," this action spectacle is as big and slick as they come. And unlike its inspiration, the James Bond films, which have grown a little ponderous, “The Final Reckoning” is fun, fun, fun — the perfect antidote to whatever political or economic anxieties may ail you.

It does center on another contemporary concern, dreaded artificial intelligence, here called The Entity and controlled by the elusive Gabriel (Esai Morales, wonderfully despicable). In a classic Cold War scenario, The Entity has infiltrated the world’s nuclear arsenals and is pushing us all toward a Strangelovian doomsday. (Only the good old U.S.A., led by Angela Bassett as President Erika Sloane, remains uncompromised.) It’s up to Ethan and his team to find The Entity’s source code and trap it in a high-tech bottle forever.

As suggested by 2023’s “Dead Reckoning Part One,” the code lies inside a wrecked Soviet sub somewhere in the Bering Sea. That sets the stage for the movie’s first great set piece, a tense (and grippingly wordless) sequence in which Ethan explores the spooky sub as it creaks and teeters on the edge of an undersea cliff. This is the kind of thing that Cruise, always Mr. Commitment, does superbly: You can feel Ethan’s terror and determination in every frame. The second great set piece, with that biplane, is a rollicking, white-knuckle thrill that seems to go on forever — and you’ll wish it would.

It isn’t all Cruise all the time; just about everyone gets a shining moment. Ving Rhames’ stoic Luther calmly works on a multi-multimegaton bomb. Simon Pegg’s amiable Benji heroically takes a bullet and Hayley Atwell’s Grace must save all humanity with her pickpocket’s lightning-quick hands. Oddly sidelined is Pom Klementieff’s ice-cold assassin, Paris; and a minor character, Degas (Greg Tarzan Davis), gets more to do — but not much.  If anyone’s poised to become next-gen figures, though, it’s those two.

Is the movie a masterpiece? Does Ethan warm our hearts like an Indiana Jones or a Luke Skywalker? Will “The Final Reckoning” go down as an endlessly rewatchable classic? No, no and probably no. But this is grade-A Hollywood entertainment, beautifully done and made with that Tom Cruise brand of care. It also leaves the door ajar — or rather, gapingly wide-open for another installment. Bring it on.