There has been much whining in the run-up to the release of this latest Bond outing – from the strangulated cry of Sam Smith’s wailing theme tune (and the reaction it provoked) to the sound of leading man Daniel Craig complaining that he would rather slash his wrists than play 007 again. After the high-water mark of Skyfall (my joint-favourite Bond movie with On Her Majesty’s Secret Service), there was a very real fear that director Sam Mendes’s second 007 adventure may go the misbegotten way of Quantum of Solace. Terrific to report, then, that while Spectre may not be the equal of its immediate predecessor, it’s still bang on target in delivering what an audience wants from this seemingly indestructible franchise: globetrotting locations (London, Rome, Tangier), spectacular stunts, impossible intrigue, inconceivable costume changes, laugh-out-loud zingers (most of them delivered by Ben Whishaw’s scene-stealing Q) and a plot that is at once utterly preposterous yet oddly apposite in its skewering of surveillance technology as inherently sinister and infinitely corruptible.