Review: Get ready for stunts on stunts on stunts in new 'Mission: Impossible'

There's not really a plot in "Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One" but there sure are a lot of plot-lets.

There's a free-spirited pickpocket (Hayley Atwell) who tangles with Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt. There are agents tasked with taking down Hunt, who has been classified as a rogue. And the "dead reckoning" part of that unwieldy title refers to the steering of a nuclear submarine that is glimpsed in the opening sequence and then mostly forgotten about. What we know about the sub is that it contains half of a key to an artificial intelligence device whose owner will — all together now — control the world.

Like last month's "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny," "Reckoning" tries to revitalize a several decades-old franchise with both the pursuit of a world-controlling key that comes in two pieces and the pairing of the veteran hero with a much younger raven-haired Englishwoman (Atwell).

This seventh "Mission" incorporates bits from previous entries in the series, which underscores how much it has changed from its beginnings, Brian De Palma's elegant, Hitchcock-influenced 1996 spy thriller. John Woo's sequel began the process of transforming "Mission" movies into loud, James Bond-esque, world-traveling adventures that are packed with stunts — and no "Mission" has been more stunt-packed than "Dead Reckoning."

There's the motorcycle-off-a-cliff sequence that has been analyzed since it debuted online last year but also a race to defuse a bomb hidden in the luggage network of an airport, a battle atop a speeding train (another element "Destiny" shares), a pursuit through the beautifully lit alleys of Venice and a thrilling car chase in the streets of Rome that feels fresh because it features something old (as in "The 39 Steps," our hero is chained to a woman who dislikes him) and something witty and quite new: The car they're in doesn't work very well.

Writer/director Christopher McQuarrie, who also made the last "Mission," stages these sequences with skill and energy. Things are chaotic, obviously — something is almost always on the verge of blowing up — but McQuarrie makes sure we have enough spatial information to understand where the bad guys and good guys are in relation to each other.

"Mission" has plenty of good guys — in addition to Cruise and (possibly) Atwell, colleagues Ving Rhames, Rebecca Ferguson and Simon Pegg are back. Although they're initially anti-Hunt, there also are a couple of CIA types played by Shea Whigham and Greg Tarzan Davis, the latter of whom is positioned to be a future "Mission" lead if Cruise decides to hang up his masks.

Bad guys, though? Not so much. Esai Morales and Vanessa Kirby both underplay their villains to such an extent that they practically vanish, a consistent problem in "Mission" movies. Movie fans can easily name half a dozen 007 villains but, give or take Philip Seymour Hoffman in the third one, can you come up with a single "Mission" antagonist?

Perhaps a charismatic baddie will emerge in "Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part Two," scheduled for next June. I'm guessing there will be more of a plot in that one, too, since the final scenes of "Part One" finally get us back to that submarine and since several promising actors are being added for that eighth "Mission," including Hannah Waddingham, Janet McTeer and Nick Offerman.

One advantage of "Part One" de-emphasizing plot is that there's not a lot for it to wrap up. It ends on a cliffhanger, to be sure. But unlike divided-in-two movies such as "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," "Part One" actually feels like a complete movie, one that gives us plenty of satisfying sequences but also leaves us wanting more.

'Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One'

*** out of 4 stars

Rated: PG-13 for violence and language.

Where: In theaters.