Two decades down and Tom Cruise's boundless franchise is alive and very much kicking.

Say what you want about Tom Cruise (and trust me, I’ve said a few things) there’s no knocking the chap’s commitment. When Tom Cruise is in for a role, you better believe he’s all in.

While the star’s early career would see him churn out drama hit after drama hit with everything from Top Gun to Rain Man, it wasn’t until Mission: Impossible that things really began cooking for Cruise as a bone fide action hero. Since then, the latter half of his career has been characterised by a string of fully-fledged action blockbuster roles and a penchant for pushing himself to the limit.

At 56, you’d think Cruise would be winding things down by now, yet it’s clear he sees his advancing years only as a challenge to push his limits further than ever before, often to his own detriment (his ankle break on the set of this very film being a prime example). Putting the shocking scant regard for his own health to one side for a moment, what this unbridled devotion to the cause has done, however, is raise the game for even his most mediocre movies.

Of everything in his filmography right now, nothing has reaped these benefits more than the Mission: Impossible franchise and it’s thanks largely to the actor’s unrivalled commitment that the series has had the longevity that it’s had. However, after 22 years and 6 films, does Tom Cruise have enough in the tank to keep the momentum going and make Mission: Impossible – Fallout a success?

After a botched effort to recover plutonium stolen by the covert terrorist group, The Apostles, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his IMF team must hunt the cores down before they’re weaponised. Under the watchful eye of bullish Special Activities operative, August Walker (Henry Cavill), Ethan and the team zig zag across the world in a race against time to halt a plot that would put millions of lives at risk and bring the world to its knees.

In many ways, the Mission: Impossible franchise is the perfect reflection of Tom Cruise himself. As the years and instalments tick by, neither Cruise nor the film series appear ready to apply the brakes any time soon. Even more miraculously, both seem to be getting better and bolder the older they get.

Both actor and franchise are about as robust as they come right now, something that felt far from the case when the wheels started falling off the series a couple of decades ago. Now on its sixth instalment, Mission: Impossible has miraculously managed to ride the John Woo storm to become one of the most reliable and consistently enjoyable blockbusters in the game.

In fact, barring the slip up of 2000’s Mission: Impossible 2, every single entry in the series has managed to one-up the last in quality, if not box office returns, and it’s fair to say that Mission: Impossible – Fallout represents the very best franchise instalment to date.

Fallout feels like the culmination of everything that’s gone before, using every single Mission: Impossible trick in the book to produce the most rounded and wholly satisfying film in the franchise yet. For a movie series to not only survive this long, but actively thrive in its advancing years, takes a huge collaborative effort, yet it’s hard to deny just how crucial Cruise is to the equation.

Right from the word go, Cruise has been the heart and soul of the franchise, pouring countless buckets of blood, sweat, and tears into a spy action series that could’ve easily fallen by the wayside otherwise. For all intents and purposes Mission: Impossible IS Tom Cruise and it doesn’t take long into Fallout before we’re given a bracing reminder of this, as he hurls himself into a whirlwind of full-blooded, dizzying action that goes far beyond what many CGI-stuffed rivals would dare.

It’s gut-punching and visceral in all the ways you’ve come to expect, yet it simply wouldn’t be the case with anyone else but Cruise behind the wheel. His insistence on doing his own stunts and putting himself in physical danger may sound reckless in the extreme, but Mission: Impossible just would not be the same without it.

God knows where he gets the energy (or the insurance) from, but his enthusiasm is positively infectious, lifting every member of the cast around him. It’s important to note that a key factor in Mission: Impossible’s renaissance from Ghost Protocol onwards has been the spreading of love between the entire cast, making the series far more of an ensemble affair in the process, and Fallout feels like the pinnacle of this approach as everyone around Cruise ups their game accordingly.

Each member of the ensemble is utilised as the perfect complement to Ethan Hunt’s reckless insanity, bouncing off both the protagonist and one another to offer a satisfying, fully-rounded viewing experience. As prime examples of this, franchise ever-present Ving Rhames and the never-less-than-charming Simon Pegg do as solid a job as ever as the core members of the IMF team and the primary source of Fallout’s well pitched comic relief.

Bolstering this, the returning Rebecca Ferguson is at her classy, arse-kicking best, while Sean Harris once again plays the villainous Solomon Lane to softly spoken, creepy perfection. However, quite literally towering above all those around him, it’s upon the broad shoulders of Henry Cavill that much of Fallout’s success resides, stealing the show as the one man wrecking ball, Walker.

If Justice League had to be sacrificed for Fallout’s success then so be it, as Cavill, glorious moustache and all, steamrollers through proceedings in a performance that dominates the screen, while playing the perfect blunt counterbalance to all of Cruise’s nimble antics.

As if to highlight just how scandalously underutilised he has been as Superman, Cavill proves that he is far more than a moody superhero, supplementing his physicality with a natural, infectious charisma that goes way beyond what he’s given as the Man of Steel. Cavill is clearly having a whale of a time with a character whose moral compass appears all over the place, as he not only goes toe-to-toe with Cruise, but comprehensively outshines him. Moustache or no moustache, when given material that allows him to shine, Cavill has the potential to be one of the best action leads out there. You can only hope that someone over at DC clocks this before it’s too late.

Ensuring that both Cavill and Cruise are given an adequate platform to shine, Fallout’s action is every bit as thrilling as anything we’ve seen before from the series, yet what tips it above even Rogue Nation in this respect is director, Christopher McQuarrie. As the only filmmaker to direct multiple Mission: Impossible instalments, McQuarrie clearly clicks with the material and his evident comfort with the franchise shines through in the action.

After the edge-of-your-seat thrills of previous effort, Rogue Nation, McQuarrie has clearly hit his groove with Fallout, as the action and plot zip around with a zeal and energy that you rarely find with spy films these days. Even luminaries like Bond have struggled to rise to the occasion in recent years, with the spy genre finding itself fast running dry of verve and inspiration.

There’s no such worry here as, despite a slower than expected start, McQuarrie ensures that every single fight and set piece ups the ante on the last. As Fallout clicks through the gears, the velocity of the action is unrelenting, as the film swings from brutal toilet punch-ups, to car chases that’d make The French Connection blush, to a helicopter showdown that will leave you breathless (and probably a nauseous).

In between the gut-punching fights, dizzying chases, and the obligatory Tom Cruise running scenes, the plot just about holds itself together. Sure, it’s nothing you haven’t seen a million times before, however, it never once becomes boring, as McQuarrie keeps it lean, mean, and stuffed with some of the best twists we’ve seen yet from the franchise.

Most importantly, despite all the usual twists and turns, Fallout never disappears into its own intrigue. It’s something that happens far too much in the spy genre, as writers find themselves compelled to weave ever more elaborate, confusing plots that invariably get lost up themselves, while tying the audience up in knots in the process. Above all else, Fallout is a fine example of what can be achieved if you stick to the basics and ace them.

Most importantly, Fallout has a firm grasp on just how ridiculous it is. The film is preposterous, overblown, and full of every spy cliché in the book, yet it not only knows this, it actively embraces these absurdities. Unlike Bond and many others within the genre, Fallout never allows itself to become po-faced, instead standing proud and owning the balls-out nuttiness of it all, unafraid to hold its hands up and admit to what it is – silly, kick-ass spy fun, pure and simple.

In the perfect embodiment of its star, the Mission: Impossible franchise may be long in the tooth, yet it shows absolutely no signs of slowing down. 22 years and 6 films in and Mission: Impossible – Fallout represents the best entry in the series yet, as both Tom Cruise and director, Christopher McQuarrie, turn everything up a notch from Rogue Nation. Full of some truly heart-stopping action and bolstered by a full-blooded performance by Henry Cavill, Fallout is just about everything you could ask for in a Mission: Impossible movie and represents one of the finest action blockbusters in many a year.