Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation

Tom Cruise's fifth outing as daredevil spy Ethan Hunt is another hugely entertaining, thrill-packed ride

Tom Cruise's fifth outing as daredevil spy Ethan Hunt is another hugely entertaining, thrill-packed ride.

It gets off to a dazzling start with Cruise clinging to the side of a cargo plane as it takes off while Simon Pegg's comic-relief sidekick, tech nerd-turned-field agent Benji, offers bungled assistance from the sidelines.

The plot concerns Alec Baldwin's testy CIA chief endeavouring to disband the Impossible Mission Force and the gang's only hope is to track down The Syndicate, a shadowy organisation of renegade spies drawn from the world's elite intelligence agencies.

At every turn, Cruise finds himself tangling with mysterious femme fatale Rebecca Ferguson, who's terrific as an ex-MI6 spy-turned-Syndicate hireling and, most of the time, the movie leaves it tantalisingly unclear whether she is helping or hindering him.

To be honest, it doesn't really matter, because you'll be gripped by the magnificent set pieces, which include a grippingly suspenseful sequence as Cruise strives to foil an assassination during a performance of Turandot at the Vienna Opera, takes part in a scorching motorcycle chase through Casablanca and breaks into an impenetrable vault in Morocco protected by ludicrously convoluted levels of security, before things reach a climax in London with some typically dexterous and dazzling IMF trickery.