Summer franchises have been known to suffer from slumps, running out of stream and dying off. The season is often filled with dead franchises, so when an old franchise lasting from 1996 to this day (with six parts including this release) is very much alive and full of stream, it is nothing short of a miracle.

Like young-blood running in the franchises’ vein, Tom Cruise, at the age of 56, runs faster, jumps further and flies more perilously than he had in any past Mission: Impossible part. The star might be wrinkling, but he can still run with the new lads of super hero movies – and, astonishingly – win.

The plot is a routine one, but the twists and turns are aplenty as the fast moving action. Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his tech pals Luther (Ving Rhames) and Benji (Simon Pegg) are on a mission to stop a nuclear attack that has resulted from an earlier failed operation by Hunt and his team. Hunt is shadowed by the new addition to the group, August Walker (a very fine, Henry Cavill, with his post-Justice League infamous moustache). Walker is a CIA operative sent to keep his higher ups in the loop on Hunt’s unorthodox way of handling things.

It might seem like the same old wine and song routine, however director/writer Christopher McQuarrie keeps the momentum tight. Fallout’s spy game is reminiscent of much older spy movies, leading to so many crosses and double crosses on-screen that one’s vision becomes cross-eyed just keeping up with the shenanigans.

The banter and character interaction builds up on old foundations of the past movie, easily flowing between drama and the large-scaled, fretfully real action sequences. The action choreography’s physicality reminds one of Jackie Chan, then of Cruise as an afterthought. It carries the same exhilaration that Chan braces before he completes an impossible feat. The same humanness is carried on by Cruise, grounding the sense of danger around him. Cruise’s Hunt might be a super-agent, however jumping from a building is still going to be painful and frightening.

Mission: Impossible – Fallout, is one of the best things from this summer line up and easily can be placed on the top three in the franchise. This franchise won’t be retiring till Cruise does – and though that man might be breathless from all the running, he does not look close to bowing out yet.•