Release Date: 09/30/2008
Label/Distributor: Music Box Films
Rating: Unrated
Retail Price: $24.98
Genre: French Cast: Jean Dujardin
Running Time: 95
DVD Video Options: Anamorphic,Color,DVD-Video,NTSC
DVD Audio Options: French;Original Language
UPC Code: 030306400099
A box-office sensation in France, comic star Jean Dujardin stars as secret agent Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath, a.k.a. OSS 117 who in the tradition of Maxwell Smart and Inspector Clouseau somehow succeeds in spite of his ineptitude. After a fellow agent and close friend is murdered, Hubert is ordered to take his place at the head of a poultry firm in Cairo. This is to be his cover while he investigates Jack's death, 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.
A blithe and witty send-up not only of spy films of that era and the suave secret agent figure but also neo-colonialism, ethnocentrism and the very idea of Western covert action in the Middle East.
OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies
By Ed Hulse -- Video Business, 9/8/2008
MPIStreet: Sept. 30
Prebook: now
> From France, a droll spoof of Cold War spy movies.
The secret-agent hero of this often hilarious spy spoof was created more than a half century ago and has already appeared in a slew of pulpy novels and European-made movies. Deftly reimagining the smug, clueless Agent 117, French comic actor Jean Dujardin recalls such pop-culture icons as Inspector Clouseau and Maxwell Smart. Dispatched to Cairo to investigate the mysterious death of a fellow agent and complete a vital mission, 117 gets involved with a slinky femme fatale (Berenice Bejo) and short-circuits an Arab rebellion. Interestingly—and amusingly—the film has been made in a style contemporaneous to its ’50s setting, low-tech visual effects and all.
Shelf Talk: This spoof took Best Film honors at the 2006 Seattle International Film Festival and won the Grand Prix award at the Tokyo International Film Festival. Unfortunately, American viewers won’t get quite as much out of OSS 117 as European viewers, who are familiar with the character and can appreciate Dujardin’s playfully arch interpretation. But the movie will call to mind early James Bond films and Mike Myers’ Austin Powers series. It needs to be plugged on the strength of its concept, as Dujardin is not widely known stateside and some viewers find subtitles off-putting.
Foreign-language action comedy, color, NR (mild language, suggestive situations), 99 min., DVD $24.98, French with English subtitlesExtras: none
Director: Michel Hazanavicius
First Run: L Int’l., May 2008, <$1 mil.