SPECTRE (12A, 148 mins)

Director: Sam Mendes

3 stars

When Skyfall was released three years ago it seemed like the stars were aligning for James Bond and that it was the culmination of everything the series was working towards.

It was the 50th anniversary of the movies and the film was released to overwhelming acclaim, going on to become the highest grossing of all time at the British box office while netting over $1bn worldwide and an unprecedented five Oscar nominations.

From such lofty heights the only way was down for follow-up SPECTRE, which on first glance offers much of what makes Ian Fleming’s superspy so beloved, yet under scrutiny begins to fade from memory very quickly.

There are several points throughout where it approaches excellence, and only occasionally in its final hour does it buckle under the weight of its hefty runtime.

Above all it's a cracking thriller and a very engaging drama, yet that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a great Bond film. It clearly really wants to be one though, and that determination to shoehorn previous films into some sort of narrative whole is perhaps the key reason why it's ultimately a step backwards.

The upshot of this is a lot of time devoted to backstory and talk and very much continuing the themes set up in Casino Royale of examining who Bond is beyond simply a ruthless killing machine.

It’s a film about ghosts of the past (Vesper Lynd, foes he’s faced, family secrets) and on the surface it’s to be admired for drawing a connecting line between all four of Daniel Craig’s Bond movies.

Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, Skyfall and this are of a piece in two regards: firstly they're all now retroactively linked by the actions of SPECTRE, and this is the first Bond film since Diamonds Are Forever to actually feature the villainous organisation (Special Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion, don’t you know).

There was a half-hearted attempt to rebrand them as Quantum in Quantum of Solace, but that was largely due to a rights squabble over the ownership of certain Bond elements.

Secondly, they're all lacking a villain who is actually trying to do something especially villainous that requires Bond to stop them. The pre-titles sequence here takes James Bond (Craig) to Mexico City during their Day of the Dead celebrations. In a glorious first few minutes we’re taken from a street teeming with people in skeleton costumes and masks to a hotel rooftop where 007 is on an assassination mission.

From there he follows clues that set him on a collision course with Franz Oberhauser (Christoph Waltz), a big cheese at SPECTRE and someone with a connection to Bond’s past, and much of the speculation before the film’s release was whether he would turn out to be Bond’s arch nemesis, Blofeld, so much a part of Connery’s days as 007.

Bond is a detective trying to solve a puzzle, and it’s the film’s progress as a genuinely absorbing mystery that sees it at its best. It's very far removed from Bonds of old, yet peppers proceedings with morsels of their well known components.

There is a lair, of sorts, and there is a henchman, the monolithic Mr. Hinx (Dave Bautista, last seen as hilarious alien Drax in Guardians of the Galaxy). He and Bond share a lengthy but slightly uninvolving car chase through the streets of Rome and a truly bruising fight on board a train that might be the film’s peak in terms of excitement.

Meanwhile in London, M (Ralph Fiennes) is battling forces of bureaucracy with Andrew Scott’s politician, throwing up questions of national security versus intrusion, a topic that has been done to death in recent times.

A number of characters who seem like they should feature more get slightly short shrift, as Bond teams up with a doctor, Madeleine Swann (Léa Seydoux), and their globetrotting search for answers takes up most of the midsection.

And SPECTRE itself doesn't quite live up to its billing: outwith one shadowy meeting, they're more background noise than the many-tentacled overlords suggested by their octopus logo and the excellent title sequence.

Speaking of which, Sam Smith’s title song works very well in context and aside from the classic theme music the score by Thomas Newman is sensational, doing much to propel the action along to perhaps disguise the fact that there’s actually very little of it.

Yet despite the relaxed approach, SPECTRE may be about the most confidently put together Bond movie of all. Returning from Skyfall, director Sam Mendes imbues it with the utmost craft, and has such confidence in his film’s pacing that he allows it to play out leisurely over the course of two and a half hours with only a small handful of major action sequences.

And Daniel Craig in his fourth outing has absolutely nailed it, with everything about his posture and body language suggesting supreme certainty and contentment with the role. Craig and Mendes together have done sterling work for Bond, and time may yet be kind to SPECTRE. Either way they’ve left their mark, and now might just be the perfect occasion for both of them to bow out.

OUTCAST (15, 99 mins)

Director: Nick Powell

2 stars

Nicolas Cage is currently knocking out around four films per year on average, the large majority of which never see the inside of a cinema. You may have to question the wisdom of releasing those that do, although there are no shortage of unintentional delights to be had from preposterous medieval adventure Outcast.

Further boosting its “Seriously?!” quotient is the casting of the long forgotten Hayden Christensen, one-time Anakin Skywalker, with he and Cage as a pair of Crusaders who have made their way east from the Holy Land to 12th century China.

Here a dying king has chosen his good younger son as his successor at the expense of his warrior elder son, who is miffed at being denied his birthright, leading Christensen’s opium-addled mercenary to protect the boy and his sister from rogue troops.

It's hard to know what's worse, the poor Chinese actors being made to say their awful lines in English, or Cage and Christensen saying their awful lines with English (and quite possibly Scottish) accents.

Everything about Outcast is hackneyed, cheesy and predictable, but the locations and sets are handsome and the fights, of which there are plenty, are passably entertaining.

Christensen’s comeback is not going to be a successful one, but he looks like Daniel Day Lewis next to the mesmerisingly terrible turn from Cage, who is allowed to growl and ham his socks off by first time director Nick Powell.

It’s sad that Cage is no longer the star he once was, but the joy of watching him struggle to pretend to only have one eye almost makes up for it.