Attention Tom Cruise!!

Your Mission, which you have accepted, is to carry the summer box-office once again.  Your $500 million stunt-crazy extravaganza “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One,” easily the most expensive movie in history, is expected to match last summer’s “Top Gun: Maverick” as a blockbuster to become the year’s top-grossing film.

That “Mission” caters to all ages and all groups is in itself a semi-miracle in our divided nation.

“Part One” is, first and most importantly, a Tom Cruise production.  Not only does the world’s most famous Scientologist control every aspect of what you see onscreen, including his death-defying stunts, but all that happened offscreen to make this 163-minute fantasy a reality.

This is the franchise’s last hurrah, a 2-part 7th installment that includes the core team – played by Ving Rhames, Rebecca Ferguson (now starring in AppleTV+ “Silo” series) and Simon Pegg – reunited for an impossible mission revolving around rogue AI, a highly contemporary real-world issue.

Alongside Cruise’s plays-by-his-own-rules Ethan Hunt are two of the UK’s most promising actors: Hayley Atwell as a first-rate pickpocket and Vanessa Kirby, a ruthless entrepreneur.  Among the most fearsome villains of the series: Esai Morales’ Gabriel who is anything but angelic and Pom Klementieff’s knife wielding Paris.

Certainly “Part One” seemed cursed initially.  As production began in Italy in 2020, COVID broke out and that nation particularly suffered devastating losses with huge numbers of infected and dead.  “Mission” stopped, virtually before they’d begun but the decision was made to keep the production team intact.

These highly regarded professionals along with the cast stayed on payroll during the many months they were not filming.  As years passed and the budget soared to an estimated $400 to $500 million, Variety wrote an article questioning whether Paramount, the studio distributing the film, had any control or were they helplessly hostage to Cruise and director-co-writer-producer Christopher McQuarrie?

Cruise ended all speculation about what he was doing with the phenomenal and unexpected success last year of his decades-later “Top Gun” sequel “Maverick,” that year’s number one hit.

Cruise turned 61 July 3 and has made few concessions to age.  Except for a chestnut brown head of hair without a single strand or gray, he looks fit, middle-aged and, as always, gung ho.

“Mission” continues to be very much in the Euro spy adventures celebrated by James Bond and the “M:I” crew on TV in the Sixties with enticing IMAX-ready settings and endless motorcycle chases, seemingly required in every installment, through Rome, Venice and, the ultimate finale, a scarily unforgettable ride on the Orient Express through the Austrian Alps.

This is where Cruise’s now-celebrated leap into the void, seen online initially last December, remains its most indelible vision: Hunt buffeted by the wind in freefall.

What, you must wonder, will they do to top this next year in “Part Two”?