So who WILL they get to be the next James Bond, eh?

Who CARES? Not while we’ve got Tom Cruise, in the saddle and laying it all on the line in the franchise that out-Bonds James Bond a little more every time there’s an “impossible mission,”
should Ethan Hunt “choose to accept it.”

“Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One” may have an ungainly title and a star “getting on up there,” occasionally showing the miles, if not always the years. The story is derivative, lurching along its excessive run-time in fits and starts. But this frothy, breathless and over-long popcorn extravaganza completes the job of co-opting Bond, James Bond.

Cruise, director Christopher McQuarrie & Co. remember what the Daniel Craig-as-Bond years let us forget. This espionage action thing can be fun, over-the-top bits need a proper double-take and yeah, the very idea of this guy doing all that, with help, is inherently laugh-out-loud amusing. And when you think about it, even the theme music for the franchise is Bond-only-better, an Americanized classic.

The script lines up a palpable threat — AI run amok, threatening to end “truth” and dominate human civilization — and a deliciously credible villain in Esai Morales.

And no matter how convuluted and contrived the situations, motivations and conflicts within might seem, no matter how obvious the need to jam in other exotic, tourist-brochure locations, no matter how many female leads Cruise interacts-but-never-quite-“clicks” with, the entertainment value remains right on the edge of off-the-charts.

A Russian sub sinks in the “opening gambit,” with both the situation and the idea of that pre-credits/pre-theme song “gambit” borrowed from Bond. There was this “key” on board. Somehow, that ties into this digital Internet, CCTV, GPS and everything-in-digital-life manipulating “Entity” that has made itself known to the world’s intelligence agencies and its most notorious villains.

Mr. Hunt is needed to fetch that key, with his boss (Henry Czerny) particularly adamant that Hunt’s “habitual rogue behavior will not be tolerated.” His team (Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg) will back him up. And wouldn’t you know it? His old rival/flame Isla (Rebecca Ferguson) figures in all this, and must be pursued to an inexplicable Arabian Desert ruin of a hideout before “bounty hunters” get her…in hte middle of a sandstorm.

Another woman-from-his-past, The White Widow (Vanessa Kirby) must be foiled. And Hunt’s fellow agent Briggs (Shea Whigham) is hellbent on chasing him down and bringing him to heel, or shooting him if he goes “rogue” with that key.

Then there’s this key-hand-off that’s interrupted by The World’s Sexiest Pickpocket, played to the hilt by Hayley Atwell. She will be in the way, in the mix and on the lam as our story takes us from Amsterdam and Abu Dhabi to Rome and — wouldn’t you know it — The Orient Express!

The script leans HARD on hoary thriller tropes (that steam-powered train) and that Alfred Hitchcock “MacGuffin,” that gimmick that drives the plot.

“There’s this key...Where’s the key…Do you HAVE the key…GET the key…How’d He/SHE get the key?”

Movie pickpockets have almost supernatural powers, and when you throw in tech-guy Benji’s 3D “perfect disguise mask” one more time you have a good idea of the magical thinking that is supposed to make these slightly-possible, wholly-implausible plots “believable.”

The action beats are grand fun, but in addition to “the money shot” — that motorcycle jump we’ve all seen TC take in the previews — they cleverly recycle car gags from not one but multiple James Bond outings, courtesy of one vintage Fiat 500.

The car and motorcycle chases, by the way? Next level thrilling, visceral and downright comical.

Morales makes a marvelously malevolent old-foe/new-villain. The exotic Pom Klementieff of “Guardians of the Galaxy” announces her presence with authority, a suicide blonde henchwoman with blood in her eye and Hunt in her sights.

Atwell, Rhames, Kirby and Whigham hit exactly the right notes, with Atwell’s jaw-dropping reactions to the mayhem she’s stumbled into and Rhames nicely rewarded with take-stock, accept the stakes with fatalism and explain-the-“mission” and its perception/reality dilemma monologues to Hunt and the audience.

“You’re playing four-dimesional chess with an algorithm!”

But these movies hang on Hunt and Cruise, the character somehow motivated to serve “the greater good,” no matter what and the actor that makes this spy game palpably real, no matter how over-the-top or under-motivated this gets.

“We live and die in the shadows, for those we hold close and those we never met.”

Cruise will finish this “mission” soon enough, with “Part Two” currently slated for next June and sure to cement his place as “The Greatest Action Star Ever” and “The Guy who Saved The Cinema.”

At least by that time, we might have some notion of the Next James Bond. But we and whoever joins His Majesty’s Secret Service will know, that shaken-not-stirred martinis aside, Bond is now a spy playing catchup to the world’s favorte “rogue agent.” And this one does his own stunts.

Rating: PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, some language and suggestive material.

Cast: Tom Cruise, Hayley Atwell, Esai Morales, Vanessa Kirby, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Henry Czerny, Carey Elwes and Rebecca Ferguson

Credits: Directed by Christopher McQuarrie, scripted by Erik Jendresen and Christopher McQuarrie, based on the Bruce Geller TV series. A Paramount release.

Running time: 2:43