007 flick revels in Day of the Dead pageantry

Where to go when 53 years of action-scene set pieces have exhausted seemingly every exotic corner of the Earth? How much globe can a globe-trotter trot?

The answer kicking off the latest James Bond film, Spectre, is a doozy. Beginning with the words "the dead are alive'" across the screen, director Sam Mendes opens on a long shot through the Day of the Dead in Mexico City, tracking Bond (Daniel Craig), masked but unmissable in a skeleton costume, through the festive throngs. He ushers a woman (Stephanie Sigman) out of the masses and into her bed, only to disrobe into a suit, step out the window and stride down the ledge. Finally spying his real prey, explosions follow, walls collapse and the resulting chase spins into a helicopter careening over a mobbed Zocalo Square.

It's a sequence of such startling audacity and gorgeous black-on-sepia tones that a nagging desire to hit "rewind" persists through the rest of Spectre. Handsome and riveting as it often is, the film never again reaches such heights.