OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies
Winner of the 2006 Golden Space Needle Award for Best Feature.
Egypt, 1955. French comic favorite Jean Dujardin stars as secret agent Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath, a.k.a. OSS 117—James Bond crossed with Maxwell Smart, Austin Powers and a bit of the The Naked Gun. After a fellow agent is killed, Hubert goes undercover as the head of a Cairo poultry firm while he investigates the murder, monitors the Suez Canal, checks up on the Brits and Soviets, burnishes France's reputation, quells a fundamentalist rebellion and brokers peace in the Middle East. "No problem," replies Hubert, whose suave self-importance is topped only by his phenomenal ignorance and dumb luck. He is met at the Cairo airport by fetching and brainy secretary Larmina El Akmar Betouche (Berenice Bejo), and during a drive into town filmed entirely with old-fashioned rear projection, Hubert marvels at the amount of sand in Egypt and pooh-poohs Larmina's assertion that "millions of people" speak Arabic. If Hubert hasn't heard of something—like Islam—he dismisses it as a silly notion that'll never catch on. From its re-visiting of '60s-style hand-to-hand combat to the double cross-festooned finale, the screenplay pays off in the manner of all self-respecting thrillers in which the bad guys only appear to triumph. With sparkling production design, a jubilantly retro score and a genuine flair for using the film and TV vocabulary of the '60s to revisit colonial arrogance, OSS 117 is a consistent delight.
Cast & Crew
Director: Michel Hazanavicius
Producer: Eric Altmayer, Nicolas Altmayer
Editor: Reynald Bertrand
Screenwriter: Jean-Francois Halin, from the OSS 117 novels by Jean Bruce
Cinematographer: Guillaume Schiffman
Music: Ludovic Bource, Kamel Ech-Cheikh
Principal Cast: Jean Dujardin, Berenice Bejo, Aure Atika, Philippe Lefebvre, Constantin Alexandrov, Said Amadis
Filmography: OSS 117: Lost in Rio (2009), OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies (2006), Sitcom, A Movie (1999)
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(2 reviews)
User reviews
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OSS 117: Cairo nest of spies, Jun 07, 2009
By Speedy2u
“terrifically funny. I laughed through the entire movie. Would like to watch again!”
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Social Retard, Jun 08, 2009
By jsn5705
“Now here is an inept spy who takes it a step further. Insulting an entire culture/religion with absolutely no clue and pulling it off. A seriously good belly laugh and I look forward to the next instalment of this character.”
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