Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One Review - 7 Ups & 3 Downs

4. Tom Cruise Crushes It As Ethan Hunt (Again)

Even when the movie is at its weakest, there's little doubting the commitment of Tom Cruise, who once again proves why he's one of the few truly bankable movie stars remaining.

As much as Ethan Hunt is a fairly shallow cipher of a character, Cruise continues to use his age-defying physicality to cement Hunt as one of the most purely entertaining action heroes in cinema history.

Cruise's willingness to endanger himself for a spectacular action sequence adds a key visceral component to this and the three prior Mission: Impossible films, but Dead Reckoning also dares to saddle Hunt with some of the heaviest emotional weight he's ever had to carry.

While it'll one day be great to see Cruise back in the card-carrying dramatic arena, for now he continues to kill it as a man who can never be accused of half-assing anything he stars in.