- Michel Hazanavicius' OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies is a film that is roughly as funny as its title. In my book, that counts as a success. Although it would seem like a real challenge to create an international spy adventure more absurd and frivolous than some of the actual entries in the James Bond pantheon, this film achieves precisely that. Its greater accomplishment, however, may be that it actually feels like a spy movie from the 60's. Rear projection shots, jazzy scores, and flashy title sequences are the order of the day, and the stage fighting is as gratuitous as can be.
- The spy doing most of that fighting is a French secret agent named (get ready) Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath (Jean Dujardin), aka OSS 117. Agent 117 is a Sean Connery-type whose goofy grin and penchant for derring-do tend to land him in more trouble rather than less. Simply put, the painfully touristic spy always manages to do and say precisely the wrong things. Despite the many efforts of his assistant/love interest Larmina (Bérénice Bejo) to enlighten him, 117's humorously uninformed opinions on colonialism, local customs, and the Muslim religion only cause him problems when he drops into Egypt on a mission. Toss in some intrigue involving an Egyptian Princess (Aure Atika) and Nazi conspirators (Richard Sammel), and you have a recipe for international disaster.
- The best moments in OSS 117 are probably also its goofiest. Flashbacks recounting inaccurately remembered and decidedly homoerotic handball games on the beach with a fellow agent (Philippe Lefebvre) certainly count. The chicken-tossing fight and, for that matter, all of the livestock-related humor are also quite memorable, as is the constant repetition of a code phrase ("How is the veal stew?") that really doesn't work outside of a restaurant. The remainder of my enjoyment of the film came primarily from watching Dujardin and Bejo do their thing. While Bejo's considerable talents are less on display than they were in The Artist, the two stars are immensely watchable whenever they're onscreen. A lesser cast could have allowed OSS 117 to become a boring farce, but this one is just strong enough to pull it off.
- Based on a character created by Jean Bruce, who wrote 88 OSS 117 novels.
