Once Ethan Hunt appears on screen he gets a message from the president. She spends a long time recapping his exploits from previous films, which make you wish you were watching one of those films instead. Then she takes time to mention that he never follows the rules but has never let her down yet. Finally she tells him that the fate of humanity is in his hands. This theme is mentioned very often, that Ethan is gambling with the fate of the human race. There's also a lot of chat about decompression.
There are no fewer than four magic items to collect: a key made of two parts, a box in a submarine, a pen-drive that fits in the box that Luther made, and another pen-drive that Luther also made. The plot is not a good one. The motivation for the AI villain is not clear, nor why there is a giant clock counting down in US Headquarters. The bad guy from a previous jaunt, Gabriel, wants to take over The Identity, which initially requires him to keep Cruise alive. But then he seems to forget about that and tries to kill Cruise.
Ethan's team consists of previous agents, the best of which surprisingly is Simon Pegg. Some of the actions scenes that run in parallel are quite good, and my favourite scenes were in the Arctic.
Cruise is a bit cheeky sometimes but fairly lifeless. He runs a lot (too much?) and spends a lot of the film in his pants. For me, that doesn't save this from being a very poor addition to the series.
