I need you to trust me. One last time. Thus says superspy Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) to the president (Angela Bassett) at a key turning point in “Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning.”  The world’s biggest movie star, now 62, is essentially also speaking to audiences who have for years doubted his abilities to continue putting life and limb in danger to keep us entertained.  The actor born Thomas Mapother IV who invented “Tom Cruise” has placed his trust in audiences for nearly 30 years in his exploits as Hunt—to the tune of over $4 billion in box office and counting—so it’s only fitting that his (allegedly) final outing as Hunt be as much a plea for cinemagoers to keep the faith in this extraordinary leading man’s unnaturally undiminished abilities.

Of Cruise’s gumption and bravery in engaging in some of the most incredible stunts ever captured on film, no logical detraction can be made.  He is an entertainer of the first order, consistently putting his all on the screen, often without the aid of computer trickery, to engender gasps from audiences who have seen it all.  No actor since Buster Keaton has so consistently committed to the thrill of danger in the name of entertaining fiction.

“The Final Reckoning,” then, indeed delivers the entertainment Cruise, as producer and star, promises, even if this time out, he and the M:I team must save the entire world from nuclear annihilation.  End-of-the-world plots are tricky: When everything is at stake, nothing is at stake.  Over eight films, Hunt and his allies have risked it all but remained largely, as their dictum requires, “in the shadows,” their work never known if it succeeds.  With the prospect of the world’s nuclear missiles being taken over by the AI program called the Entity, however, there is no hiding.  It’s been 41 years since “The Terminator” proposed an AI-engendered apocalypse, but we are now closer than ever to the robots taking over.  Just ask ChatGPT (or don’t).

Not to worry, as our man Hunt is on the case: One last time.  In a nod to how long this particular franchise has been going, Hunt’s initial briefing comes to him on (gasp) a videocassette, which fizzles in self-destruction to officially light the fuse on this plot.  “Final Reckoning” is both a sequel to 2023’s “Dead Reckoning: Part 1” as well as a callback to several of the earlier films in the series, most notably the first three.  The proceedings are once again competently managed by director Christopher McQuarry on his fourth “Mission” as director and/or co-writer.  The adrenaline is pumped to eleven on IMAX screens, and you will leave (as I did) with a pulse rate nearing 200 by the time it’s all over.  (I even waited, unsatisfied, for a post-credit tease.)

Notice I said that the “Final Reckoning” is “competent.”  For extreme-budget filmmaking, there has arguably been no more exciting series in modern cinema than M:I, and so attempting to wrap up a three-decade-long arc by retroactively tying it to earlier films is a tall order.  That is both the strength as well as the drawback of “Final Reckoning.”  Small moments from earlier films are referenced—thankfully with flashbacks, for the memory aid—in an attempt to bring Ethan to this moment, “the sum of our choices,” as one character intones (the Daniel Craig James Bond franchise tried such retroactive continuity as well).  However, it will take a patience-testing nearly three hours to do so, by which time Ethan Hunt will have nearly drowned, frozen to death, gotten blown up, fallen from miles above the earth, and yet somehow still come out the other side looking very much like Tom Cruise.

I’ve seen all of the “Mission” flicks and admired most of them despite their uneven track record (the less said about John Woo’s No 2. from 2000, the better). They’ve worked by always taking the premise seriously—and in surrounding Cruise with thoroughly competent supporting players and equally exquisite locations the world over.  (“Final Reckoning” adds South Africa, Norway, and Italy to the series’ rather extensive travelogue.)

The “Mission” movies have always been at their best when staging impossible stunts, whether it was Cruise’s long-ago infiltration of the “quiet room” at the CIA in the 1996 original or watching him run a motorcycle over a ravine in “Dead Reckoning.”  “Final Reckoning” has a crackerjack climax that takes place, for reasons I won’t bore you with, on two biplanes, with our hero’s destiny and life quite literally hanging in the balance.  Let it not be said that Cruise doesn’t suffer for his art.

The biggest joy in “Final Reckoning” is seeing familiar faces back for more, not least Hunt’s old spy buddy Luther Stickwell (Ving Rhames), who’s been around since Mission the First twenty-nine years ago.  Other returning players include good guys Simon Pegg and Hayley Atwell, uber-bad guy Esai Morales’s Gabriel, and government goons including Henry Czerny’s Eugene Kitridge, who is there to frown generously as Hunt once again disobeys direct orders.  Oh, and there’s also one outstanding bonus return engagement from Brian DePalma’s first film, whom I wouldn’t dream of spoiling.

And yet, despite the excitement and several expertly executed stunt sequences, “Final Reckoning” feels somewhat hollow.  Several narrative stretches are even emotionally gooey, wallowing unnecessarily in what I like to call the “too much melodrama” (TMM) pit.  The demons that haunt Hunt from his earlier exploits still sit Polly-like on his shoulder, but neither he nor “they” seem to have the reckoning Gabriel and the Entity get as just desserts.  Granted, Hunt still gets to save the day, but perhaps it’s too much to hope he’ll finally get some therapy even in retirement.

In theaters (and IMAX) May 23rd.

Rated PG-13 for violence, near-nuclear Armageddon and Cruise hanging from airplanes qualifying legally perhaps as elder abuse