It’s the exposition scenes that really tip off director Christopher McQuarrie’s commendable embrace of the inherent ridiculousness of this screen franchise that he’s basically made into his life’s work. Any time that latest Mission: Impossible circles around to another explanation of the labyrinthine particulars of the premise or plot, McQuarrie stages the sequence with a strangely rollicking, almost taunting spirit. A scene early on in a U.S. governmental briefing room featured various suited and uniformed taking turns to sternly deliver about a sentence apiece, like Von Trapp offspring stepping forward to yammer out their chirpy verses one at a time. By the time these stalwart governmental figures are laying out the mandate of the Impossible Missions Force with determined seriousness, the whole exercise seems to be akin to a staring contest between people wearing funny hats, both wondering if the other will break first.

Sure, there’s a plot running through the seventh film to feature Tom Cruise playing Ethan Hunt, the daring agent of Rasputin-ish resilience, but I’m not sure it matters. Like always, he is charged with stopping a threat of dubious plausibility — this time, its megalomaniacal AI — and he can only imagine prevailing if he has the full support his trusty team, including characters played by Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, and Rebecca Ferguson. There’s often some part of Ethan’s past catching up with him; here it’s a figure from his less scrupulous days named Gabriel (Esai Morales), whose greed and inner anger puts him on the wrong side of this latest mission that might not be possible. Rounding out the familiar elements is a title of such generic toughness that it evades the memory like a slippery spy. Only the notable cumbersomeness of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One suggests that it might be easier to place with its action than the interchangeable predecessor subtitles Fallout, Ghost Protocol, and Rogue Nation, which sound more like Metallica album titles than the installments in the most consistently enjoyable film series going.

Where McQuarrie and Erik Jendresen, his credited co-screenwriter, shrewdly swirl the formula is with the inclusion of a pro thief named Grace (playing winningly by Hayley Atwell). Because she was hired to swipe part of the puzzle-box key that serves as the movie’s prime MacGuffin, Grace gets yanked into the ping-ponging action. Unlike other newcomers in preceding films, Grace reacts to the complicated mayhem with startled disbelief. She has her own formidable pickpocket skill set, but that’s based around sliding away discreetly, miles away from the parachute-popping and ticking time bomb excesses of Ethan and the gang. As the movie teeters over pitfalls of overt absurdity, Grace serves as a helpful audience surrogate. She, too, can’t quite believe what she’s seeing.

These movies rise and fall on the effectiveness of their set pieces. On that count, this first part of the Dead Reckoning saga is another resounding success. The action showcases are astonishingly inventive, led by an extended car chase through the streets of Rome and a prolonged train crash that emulates Buster Keaton in its combination of dire threat and comic intricacy. McQuarrie shoots the scenes with evident care and works with editor Eddie Hamilton to piece them together with equal emphasis on energy and clarity. It’s all still ridiculous, of course, but McQuarrie’s has a fierce certainty that he can sell this particular ridiculousness, that he can make it feel undeniably real. That’s exactly what he achieves, helped considerably by a star with a gonzo commitment to personally performing the most outlandish stunts anyone can dream up. Defying gravity is only impressive if the audience believes those doing so could actually fall if they lost their grip on the edge.