OSS 117: Le Caire nid d'espions / OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies (2006)

Another one of those 'pot luck' movies, that I recorded knowing little about other than the Radio Times star rating and description, OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies was yet another success! A spot-on hilarious spoof of sixties spy drama, James Bond being a particular 'victim', although the source material is a real 'OSS 117' adventure, a French movie from the same period. This I learned after seeing the film, while I watched I figured it was Sean Connery's Bond they were spoofing because that's my cultural reference point!

Played much straighter than Austin Powers spoofery, OSS 117 sees Jean Dujardin play Agent Jack Jefferson as he is tasked with, among other things, solving peace in the middle East, and he travels to Egypt to do so. Dujardin could easily play a straight French Bond, he's the definition of Connery in the sixties, although his performance is aided by cinematography that makes the whole film look fifty years old. The 60's feel continues in the use of grainy rear projection footage when Jack drives anywhere. 

Jack is such a preening poseur he could be unlikable, but the whole thing is packed with a real love for the source material, and the scipt is peppered with sub-Roger Moore level one liners. The treatment of women, the casual mysogeny of Connery's Bond, is mimicked and shown up, while Jack's lack of knowledge about the cultures he mixes in (at one point he beats up a Muslim calling others to prayer as he's disturbing his sleep) is not just funny, it provides comment on the situation the world finds it in now, with invading Western armies involved in Iraq and Afghanistan and finding a cultural mismatch. 

The film had me laughing all the way through, and marked Dujardin out as a (French)man to watch. There's a sequel out there, Lost in Rio, which I'll have to hunt down. If it's anywhere near as good as this one I'm in for a treat, as Cairo, Nest of Spies is easily the best Bond spoof there is.