The influence of Marvel is felt elsewhere too: a plan to combine the world’s intelligence capabilities into one all-seeing, all-knowing supersnoop bears striking similarities to Captain America: The Winter Soldier. (It does lead to a doozy of a torture scene, though.) Dovetailing Spectre’s plot with those of Craig’s previous Bonds is a dubious move, while the edifice that houses Scott’s Centre of National Security resembles nothing so much as Stark Tower. Ok, so sparks don’t exactly fly between Craig and eventual leading lady Lea Seydoux – or, for that matter, between Craig and Christoph Waltz, dismayingly bland as an overly genteel adversary whose primary beef, once revealed, verges on the petulant. A dust-up on the slopes involving one wingless plane and three 4x4s leads seamlessly to train-based fisticuffs straight out of From Russia With Love, an explosive desert confrontation, and a denouement involving a familiar place in unfamiliar shape. From this point on there’s nary a let-up. Things quickly improve when the action moves to Austria, where Bond has a chilly encounter with old adversary Mr White (Jesper Christensen, finally making good on the promise of his all too fleeting cameos in Casino Royale and Quantum Of Solace). Oddly, though, the nocturnal car chase that follows fails to stir the blood, hampered as it is by an incongruously jaunty tone and the sneaking suspicion that, even with man-mountain Dave Bautista at the wheel of the Jaguar chasing Craig’s Aston Martin along Rome’s cobbled thoroughfares, there isn’t much at stake. A clandestine gathering of Spectre bigwigs in a gothic Roman palazzo exuding all the brooding menace of an Eyes Wide Shut sex orgy. Mendes’ film is at its most atmospheric here.
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