OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies (2006)
1h 39m | PG-13
Set in 1955, French secret agent Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath/OSS 117 is sent to Cairo to investigate the disappearance of his best friend and fellow spy Jack Jefferson, only to stumble into a web of international intrigue.
Director: Michel Hazanavicius
Studio: Artémis Productions
Genre: Crime, Action, Adventure, Comedy
Video: 720p
Cast
Jean Dujardin
as Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath, alias OSS 117
Bérénice Bejo
as Larmina El Akmar Betouche
Aure Atika
as La princesse Al Tarouk
Philippe Lefebvre
as Jack Jefferson
Constantin Alexandrov
as Setine
Saïd Amadis
as Le ministre égyptien
Reviews
This was a solid debut for Hazanavicius and a very fun film. There's uneven pacing, but I was very pleased with this, which seemed an interesting hybrid between the James Bond and Pink Panther film series. I loved the scoring and cinematography as well. Dujardin's character was a bit strange and the pacing was a tad uneven, but those are small flaws. This is the first of Hazanavicius' films I have seen, though I have 'The Artist' on blu. I've heard that in the sequel, he jumps a decade to the 60's--it would be interesting, if they decide to eventually continue the series, if each film could be of following decades, straight through to the present day. It was clever of the writers, through parallelism, to subconsciously suggest a linkage of the Nazis to radical Arab terrorists, so soon after 9/11, and, six years before 'Skyfall', what anyone knowing anything about espionage and counterintelligence would undoubtedly know--that all agents would probably be bisexual. I look forward to checking out Hazanavicius' other films, and hope there are eventually more in this series, for I have loved all kinds of spy films and spoofs of them, in the history of cinema.