Tom Cruise thwarts the apocalypse on a broken ankle

And so, fellow moviegoers: Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what Tom Cruise can — and will — do for you.

The answer is anything. The man will do anything to entertain you. At age 56, when the rest of us are making chiropractor appointments and upping our corrective lenses, Cruise will jump out of a plane for you, into a lightning storm. He’ll learn to fly a helicopter for you, all for one nausea-inducing helicopter piloting stunt — yep, he’s piloting AND acting — that sends him into a death spiral in “Mission: Impossible — Fallout .”

It should go without saying that Cruise will hang off a sheer cliff for you. Oh, also: he will dangle off a rope from a helicopter, then bungee jump off it for you.

And finally, Mr. Cruise will shatter his ankle jumping from one building to another for you — and then sprint like hell on that broken ankle. Because, what’s an MI film without a Cruise sprint?

One day, if this continues, it will surely seem silly. One day, people will chuckle sympathetically at the exploits of this wellmeaning but wrinkled movie star, perhaps in his 80s then, putting his life in danger to please his fans. Now, though, is not that day. With his partner, returning directorwriter Christopher McQuarrie, Cruise delivers all the above in the ridiculously entertaining “Fallout,” his sixth outing as Ethan Hunt.

As for the plot, well, you may chuckle in confusion. It gets unnecessarily complicated. For most movies, this would be a much bigger problem. But because “Fallout” moves so quickly from one crazy stunt to another, it doesn’t matter. You’ll think, “Hmm, what?” But then, “Whoa! Is Tom about to jump off that building?”

We begin, as always, with a new mission — this time, it arrives in a hollowedout copy of Homer’s “Odyssey,” perhaps a reference to Hunt’s own journey. We’ll try to boil it down: The evildoers are the Apostles, terrorists who aim to nuke the world’s top religious sites — the Vatican, Jerusalem and Mecca — and bring on an apocalypse. They’re in league with Solomon Lane (Sean

CHIABELLA JAMES — PARAMOUNT PICTURES AND SKYDANCE VIA THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Tom Cruise and Vanessa Kirby appear in a scene from “Mission: Impossible - Fallout.”