SPECIAL agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is back to face an international crisis of terrifying magnitude.

Former IMF colleague, Sean Ambrose (Dougray Scott), has stolen a deadly, genetically-engineered toxin and is threatening to sell the technology to the highest bidder.

The virus, known as Chimera, is capable of turning a healthy human into a seething mass of blood and pus within the space of 30 hours.

Hunt is assigned technical experts Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames) and Billy Baird (John Polson) to help him on his mission, which involves stealing the antidote drug Belleraphon and recruiting Ambrose's former girl, jewel thief Nyah Hall (Thandie Newton), as a woman on the inside.

Ambrose is still madly in love with Nyah and welcomes her back to his island retreat with open arms. Unfortunately, his chief bodyguard Hugh Stamp (Richard Roxburgh) isn't nearly so trusting, and organises a cunning ruse to test her loyalty.

Devastated that the woman he loves would betray him, Ambrose channels all of his rage into destroying the IMF team, using Nyah as the bait.

Plot and character development are kept to a minimum, which leaves even more room for director John Woo to dazzle the audience with slow motion motorcycle chases, balletic fight sequences, and Cruise - who is set to earn £75m from the film - performing all sorts of flying kicks and somersaults.

There were reports of creative differences on the Australian set during the seven-month M:I2 shoot.

Mainly they arose because Cruise insisted on doing his own stunts on motorbikes and cars. The actor also demanded that he, rather than a stunt double, climb a 1,500-foot cliff in the movie's opening shots.

"I do it because it's fun. I'm not a great mountain climber but things like that excite me. I think a lot of people are going to think that stuff is special effects, but it's not. I'm on the mountain. Throughout the fight scenes, when things come dangerously close, that's all real," he says.