OSS 117: Cairo Nest of Spies (2006)
(OSS 117: Le Caire, nid d'espions)
Country: FR
Technical: col/2.35:1 99m
Director: Michel Hazanavicius
Cast: Jean Dujardin, Bérénice Bejo, Aure Atika
Synopsis:
The impossibly vain, inept and intrepid French agent Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath is sent to Cairo to solve the mystery of some arms gone missing from a Russian ship. There he narrowly avoids creating an international incident and triggering a fundamentalist uprising while seducing the highborn local beauties.
Review:
What seems to the uninformed to be a less tasteless riff on the Austin Powers franchise is in fact a revisiting of a character who appeared in a quartet of movies made during the sixties in France, which themselves spoofed the Bond movies. Dujardin brilliantly nails the character of a preening, arrogant and endearingly naïve gallic seducer, but the chief delight of the film is the recreation of a definitively sixties look in the cinematography. Comedically it is an uneven ride, but the game, deadpan playing by an expert cast is a winning recipe, and a nice touch is the device that has the chauvinistic hero gradually become fluent in Arabic and features a classic sequence in which he must play a solo on the Oud to an expectant nightclub crowd.
(OSS 117: Le Caire, nid d'espions)
Country: FR
Technical: col/2.35:1 99m
Director: Michel Hazanavicius
Cast: Jean Dujardin, Bérénice Bejo, Aure Atika
Synopsis:
The impossibly vain, inept and intrepid French agent Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath is sent to Cairo to solve the mystery of some arms gone missing from a Russian ship. There he narrowly avoids creating an international incident and triggering a fundamentalist uprising while seducing the highborn local beauties.
Review:
What seems to the uninformed to be a less tasteless riff on the Austin Powers franchise is in fact a revisiting of a character who appeared in a quartet of movies made during the sixties in France, which themselves spoofed the Bond movies. Dujardin brilliantly nails the character of a preening, arrogant and endearingly naïve gallic seducer, but the chief delight of the film is the recreation of a definitively sixties look in the cinematography. Comedically it is an uneven ride, but the game, deadpan playing by an expert cast is a winning recipe, and a nice touch is the device that has the chauvinistic hero gradually become fluent in Arabic and features a classic sequence in which he must play a solo on the Oud to an expectant nightclub crowd.
(OSS 117: Le Caire, nid d'espions)
Country: FR
Technical: col/2.35:1 99m
Director: Michel Hazanavicius
Cast: Jean Dujardin, Bérénice Bejo, Aure Atika
Synopsis:
The impossibly vain, inept and intrepid French agent Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath is sent to Cairo to solve the mystery of some arms gone missing from a Russian ship. There he narrowly avoids creating an international incident and triggering a fundamentalist uprising while seducing the highborn local beauties.
Review:
What seems to the uninformed to be a less tasteless riff on the Austin Powers franchise is in fact a revisiting of a character who appeared in a quartet of movies made during the sixties in France, which themselves spoofed the Bond movies. Dujardin brilliantly nails the character of a preening, arrogant and endearingly naïve gallic seducer, but the chief delight of the film is the recreation of a definitively sixties look in the cinematography. Comedically it is an uneven ride, but the game, deadpan playing by an expert cast is a winning recipe, and a nice touch is the device that has the chauvinistic hero gradually become fluent in Arabic and features a classic sequence in which he must play a solo on the Oud to an expectant nightclub crowd.