Picking up almost where the previous film, Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol (2011) left off, Rogue Nation (the title is meaningless) saw Christopher McQuarrie take over the director’s chair when he stayed for at least the next three films in the series. McQuarrie and star/producer Tom Cruise were long-time collaborators – McQuarrie had written Valkyrie (2008), Jack Reacher (2012) – which he also directed – and Edge of Tomorrow (2014), all starring Cruise. They would go on to work together again on Jack Reacher: Never Go Back (2016), which McQuarrie produced, and the abysmal The Mummy (2017), which he wrote.

He also handled scripting duties on Rogue Nation and picked up the thread left dangling at the end of Ghost Protocol, which had seen Hunt being offered a mission to track down the mysterious “The Syndicate. At the start of Rogue Nation, Hunt is in London on their trail, having already tried to climb aboard a Russian transport plane as it takes off while on a side mission. There’s nothing here that quite matches the jaw-dropping Burj Khalifa scene in Ghost Protocol but this is probably as close as it gets – and yes, once again, that really is Cruise holding onto the outside of an aircraft as it takes to the air. Even for the stunt-happy cruise, it’s an audacious moment.

As for the rest, there’s an air of familiarity. The IMF is shut down (again) leaving Hunt and co stranded in the field (again), operating without license or backup (again). It’s certainly not original but it is satisfyingly elaborate. CIA Director Alan Hunley (Alec Baldwin) manages to get the IMF shut down, absorbing its agents, like William Brandt (Jeremy Renner) into the Agency. Hunt is captured by the The Syndicate and is set to be tortured by Janik “The Bone Doctor” Vinter (Jens Hultén) but manages to escape with the help of disavowed MI6 agent and Syndicate operative Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson). Hunt has no backup (again) but he does have a clue – a blond haired man who killed his contact in London and who is identified as former MI6 agent Solomon Lane (Sean Harris). Six months later, Hunt, who has been lying low in Paris, surfaces to lure Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg) to a performance at the Vienna State Opera where the Syndicate is planning to kill the Austrian Chancellor. Faust again saves Hunt and Dunn reveals that the Syndicate is trying to overthrow “the old world order” through a series of terrorist atrocities. With Hunt now pursued by the CIA’s Special Activities Division, Brandt despatches Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames) to track him down and help keep him safe.

Stickell joins Hunt, Dunn, and Faust in Casablanca where they manage to retrieve vital Syndicate data, information on a secret British government red box, only for Faust to make off with it. Dunn and Faust are abducted by Lane and, needing the Prime Minister’s (Tom Hollander) biometrics to access the data, sends Hunt and co to abduct him. The PM confides that Lane was once running a top-secret project to perform missions without oversight, Hunt gets his biometrics and destroys the data – but not before memorising it and meeting with Lane to save Faust and Dunn…

Rogue Nation isn’t quite as good as Ghost Protocol but as it’s full to overflowing with daft gizmos, dafter action scenes and improbable twists and turns of the plot it barely seems to matter. By the end of the film, the Impossible Missions Force has got its own SPECTRE or THRUSH (it follows a very similar arc to the gradual exposing of SPECTRE in the Daniel Craig Bond films) in The Syndicate. It doesn’t bear any resemblance to The Syndicate of the original television series which had been the mafia in all but name – this is far more insidious and impenetrable conspiracy that should keep the series going for a few more films yet.

It was nice to see the IMF agents again working as a team and Ferguson makes a terrific new addition, untrustworthy, shamelessly flirting with Hunt and remaining morally ambiguous to the very end. Her character is somewhat softened by the end of the next film, Fallout, but here’s she’s fantastic. Pegg gets more to do and in Sean Harris the series finally gets a truly memorable villain, a horrible, softly spoken psychopath who proves to be more than a match for the ever-resourceful Hunt.

McQuarrie keeps the suspense on the boil throughout and knows his way around an action scene – though to be fair one should probably give some of the credit for that to second unit director Gregg Smrz. He’d already done action unit duties on Mission: Impossible II (2000) and joined Eric Schwab (Mission: Impossible (1996)), the legendary Vic Armstrong (Mission: Impossible III (2006)) and Dan Bradley (Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol (2011)) in bringing their expertise to the series’ outstanding action scenes. It’s hard to tell who did what on these films really – as is often the case it was a fine collaborative effort and everyone involved should be applauded for their work.

As with all the Missions: Impossible, it’s certainly not a film to think too hard about. By this stage you probably don’t need me or anyone else to tell you that it’s utterly preposterous but as we flit around the world from London to Paris to Vienna to Casablanca and back to London, it’ a hard film to dislike. The threat posed by The Syndicate is only vaguely sketched in, leaving plenty of room for sequels t go deeper into their motives and aims, the cast is fantastic, and the plot just about holds together amid the machinations and stunts. And sure enough Fallout, film number six, does indeed delve into the organisation more.