(12A, 125mins) Tom Cruise, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ving Rhames, Laurence Fishburne, Michelle Monaghan, Maggie Q, Keri Russell. Directed by J. J. Abrams

Lalo Schifrin's theme tune given a contemporary spin by Kanye West... CHECK.

Tom Cruise abseiling on a motorised rope, stopping mere centimetres away from a painful landing face-first into the ground... CHECK.

Enough latex masks, disguises and costumes to stock a fancy dress emporium... CHECK.

A dour Impossible Mission Force director who utters the immortal line: "This message will self-destruct in five seconds"... CHECK.

Close-ups of Cruise looking sweaty and blood-spattered in a tight-fitting black T-shirt with slicked hair that doesn't look a strand out of place)... CHECK.

Double-cross, triple-cross and The Holy Cross....CHECK.

With the pungent whiff of familiarity, the beautiful and buff members of the I.M.F. return in the third and most coherent mission so far, gallivanting from home turf to Berlin, Rome and Shanghai.

Action set pieces are spectacular, beginning with an almighty bang as the team storms a heavily guarded warehouse. Various pyrotechnic-laden showdowns by land, sea and air follow, including a helicopter chase that almost results in the untimely demise of a flock of innocent sheep.

The three screenwriters keep the hairpin twists to a minimum and concentrate on characterisation.

However, they are not averse to the odd detour from logic, such as asking us to accept that the I.M.F. would be thwarted at a vital juncture by a dodgy mobile phone signal. Shouldn't someone inform the megalomaniacs of the world that the good guys are powerless as long as they build their fortress in a communications black spot?

Cruise slips effortlessly back into the black togs of special operative Ethan Hunt, who has retired from active duty and now restricts himself to training new agents, like his most recent protege Lindsey Farris (Russell).

These days, Ethan is happily building a life with his fiancee Julia (Monaghan), dreaming of happy families and pretending to be a researcher into traffic patterns.

His dream is put on hold when operations leader Musgrave gets in touch: "Farris has been off the grid for 11 hours. I'm sending in search and rescue. I hoped you'd want it."

And so Ethan teams up with his fellow I.M.F. agents transportation expert Declan (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) and the beautiful yet deadly Zhen (Q) to save Lindsey from international weapons trader Owen Davian (Hoffman).

However, the mission uncovers an even greater threat: Davian is attempting to sell something called The Rabbit's Foot for $850,000,000.

The team must recover The Rabbit's Foot whatever that may be before a rogue state acquires it.

Director JJ Abrams, co-creator of the television series Lost and Alias, thrives under the intense pressure of delivering the most exciting and outrageous stunts and orchestrating carnage on a grand scale, complete with myriad nifty gadgets.

He opens, daringly, with a scene from the end of the film, and then flashes back to show us the lead-up to the tragedy, arming us with tidbits of information so we spend the rest of the picture trying to guess what happens next.

Cruise performs many of his own stunts, adding to the authenticity, and also gets to demonstrate some emotion for the romantic sub-plot, which becomes saccharine towards the end.

Indeed, the climactic action sequence is possibly the film's weak point, with at least one flash of unintentional hilarity and a timecheck to doomsday, delivered gleefully by Hoffman's terrifically menacing baddie, that the film then wilfully ignores.