Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is the swan song for Chris McQuarrie and Tom Cruise, the IMF’s match made in heaven. The duo teamed up with the fifth installment, Rogue Nation, and have been inseparable ever since. Unfortunately, The Final Reckoning doesn’t have them racing toward the finish line so much as dragging themselves across it. The film feels like a bedraggled Ethan Hunt, relentless and half dead, the star and director giving it their all, but clearly out of steam.

We meet Ethan just a few months after the events of Dead Reckoning, eager to stop Gabriel (Esai Morales) from unleashing an evil AI known as The Entity upon the world. The stakes? Total global collapse and the end of the human race as we know it. If that wasn’t stakes enough, Hunt has still technically gone rogue, so he’s got the CIA on his tail, too.

While the films have never really been all that grounded (even the first one smashes a helicopter through a train tunnel), The Final Reckoning manages to be utterly ridiculous. Lines like “We can dethrone the lord of lies,” and “the total annihilation of cyberspace,” feel ready-made for mockery by the boys of MST3K or How Did This Get Made. At the same time, M:I delivers that absurdity with such deadly earnestness, you don’t really want to laugh.

It’s that sincerity that has the power to pull audiences through. For almost 30 years, Hunt and Luther (Ving Rhames) have been saving the world. Benji (Simon Pegg) has been by their side for nearly 20. Unlike the snark, sniping, and internal politicking that have defined the Marvel Universe, this trio has been best friends the entire time. Hunt’s whole character is defined by his rabid, unwavering love of his friends, his refusal to sacrifice them willingly, which is a hell of a lot of earned goodwill for these characters.

How can you not root for them despite how exponentially silly the phrase “The Entity” becomes with each subsequent utterance? These are our friends! Hayley Atwell and Pom Klementieff return as some of our favorite new faces, even if they don’t get even half as much opportunity to shine. Still! What hijinks they get up to! And by hijinks, I of course mean absolutely mind-blowing stuntwork.

The film’s two big setpieces are as different from each other as they are brain-melting. The first throws Hunt alone to the bottom of the sea to explore the wreckage of Dead Reckoning’s fateful submarine. The second hangs him from a biplane by his feet. To say more would be to spoil it entirely, but suffice it to say that this is where McQuarrie and Cruise haven’t lost a bit of their edge. The sequences are genuinely breathtaking, the kind of thrilling movie magic that makes you fall in love with action films.

These scenes are why almost everyone in the theater is really there. Half the thrill has become knowing that Cruise is actually doing those things. He’s truly defying gravity, death, and probably his own life insurance. The technique required to do these things, let alone film them? That’s Hollywood! Years of honing their crafts have allowed McQuarrie and Cruise to make some of the most unbelievable action sequences in cinema. The trouble will be getting audiences to sit through the buildup.

Final Reckoning’s first hour is a trial for even the most diehard Mission: Impossible fan. It attempts to pack in as much info as possible, but says too much and too little at the same time. As a result, it feels rushed and haphazard, losing the specificity of place required to follow along and get on the film’s emotional level. It bounces us from room to room, leaving you wondering where the hell you are? Did you miss something? Are you even supposed to know? Does it matter? Oh well, too bad, the fights keep coming. There’s no time to find out, we’re on to the next scene!

The lack of footing is a slippery spot from which to leap into the rest of the film. Especially with Final Reckoning seemingly suffering from a lack of faith in itself. So much becomes bogged down in a completely unnecessary retconning of the entire franchise. McQuarrie and co. seem to think that what we need to feel satisfied with this epic conclusion is an MCU- or Star Wars–style throughline, with nods and winks to characters past and not one but two separate montages.

Part of the delight in the franchise, particularly given the state of the studio system, is just how much it doesn’t need any of that. They’re some of the few films where prior knowledge of an encyclopedia of lore isn’t necessary to come in and enjoy the ride. The series’ tender heart boils down to merely doing right by the ones you love and doing good for the world at large. Its mark on cinema is its understanding of awe. That’s all Final Reckoning needed to have. Everything else just gets in the way.

Whether its plotting is a minor nuisance or an endlessly frustrating exercise in patience is up for debate. Perhaps I’ll get to the bottom of that on a rewatch. Either way, it’s not an entirely satisfying ending for a series we’ve come to love. But the glorious spectacle of it? Well, that’s sure as hell a reason to get your butt in a seat in front of the biggest screen you can find.

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is holding its breath until it hits theatres on May 23.

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning Trailer: