Ask Simon Pegg to name his favourite Mission: Impossible movie, and the easygoing British actor takes only a second to come up with his answer. The new Mission: Impossible—Fallout, opening Friday (July 27), finds him returning to the role of Benji Dunn for the fourth time in the series, the character having gradually morphed from a systems analyst to a capable field agent with a flair for adding comic levity to tense situations.

“The thing about this one was that it was the longest one, but it’s definitely my favourite of all the films to watch,” Pegg tells the Georgia Straight, on the line from a Toronto publicity stop. “I’ve already seen it three times, which is sort of unprecedented. Usually I’ll watch something once, or twice at the most, and then let it go. But I saw Fallout in Paris for a press screening before starting the main body of doing press. Then I watched it in London with my family, and watched it again in Washington because I wanted to see it with a U.S. crowd. It really does bear repeated viewings. I don’t think I’ve ever been as enthusiastic about watching a film I’ve been in.”

This might have something to do with the sprawling nature of the film, which sees Tom Cruise return as Ethan Hunt, an American Impossible Missions Force (IMF) agent who will stop at nothing in the battle against global terrorism. Fallout has Hunt and his team—which includes Dunn—tearing across Europe and Asia in a race to recover a case of nuclear-weapons-grade plutonium. Over the course of the film’s two-and-a-half hours, chase scenes take place at warp speed through the streets of Paris, characters do battle over ice fields in airborne helicopters, and towering buildings are there to be jumped from. Early reviews have been calling Fallout not only the best of the series, but also one of the greatest action movies of all time.

Pegg has another reason to love the film. When Dunn first appeared in the franchise in Mission: Impossible III he was tethered to the lab. Fallout has him ripping along the Seine behind the wheel of a speedboat, trading punches with rogue assassins in a cabin in Kashmir, and dodging bullets in Belfast.

“We have a really amazing stunt team, so the fight choreography and all that stuff isn’t just about learning moves like a dance,” he says. “You go in and you do fight training, boxing drills, and fitness drills. Then you start to apply those skills to the fights and other action sequences. It’s really great fun, and it’s part of what makes these films such a riot to do.”

Pegg was brought into the series by J.J. Abrams, who directed Mission: Impossible III. Abrams had loved the actor, screenwriter, and comedian in the critically lauded zombie tribute Shaun of the Dead, which Pegg cowrote and starred in. At the time, the Englishman didn’t expect to become a major part of the franchise moving forward.

“I thought J.J. was doing a bit of stunt casting because he’d seen Shaun of the Dead and thought I’d be a good gimmick,” Pegg says. “I didn’t really anticipate things going any further. Then a fourth Mission: Impossible was floated and I was back at it. Every time a new one has come up since then it’s been a pleasant surprise.”

As a bonus, each new installment gives Pegg the chance to reunite with a team of fellow returning actors—Cruise, Ving Rhames, Rebecca Ferguson, and Sean Harris—whom he now considers friends. Breaking with franchise tradition, Christopher McQuarrie, who helmed 2015’s Mission: Impossible—Rogue Nation, returned as a director for Fallout. That marked the first time the same director has worked on two M:I films.

“This one in particular was a bit like getting the band back together because we’d had such fun on Rogue Nation,” Pegg says. “Ordinarily, we start a new film and there’s a new director, so with Chris back as well it was very much a little reunion.”