1960s-Era James Bond is Skewered in New Spoof ‘OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies’

Submitted by HollywoodChicago.com on June 27, 2008 - 1:42am

CHICAGO – The heroic nature of the James Bond series of films begs several questions about his representation of western world power. For one, just who did he act for and what was he fighting against?

Rating: 3.0/5.0

The new French film “OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies” attempts to answer this question through a subtle and sporadically funny satire, a skewering of the Bond image and geopolitics in the 1960s.

Jean Dujardin plays Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath (also known as agent OSS 117). He’s assigned to Cairo in the late 1950s to investigate fellow agent Jack Jefferson’s murder and to quell a Muslim uprising against western interests.

Read Patrick McDonald’s full review of “OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies” in our reviews section.

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With a cover as a chicken trader – complete with a factory and caged birds – he proceeds to infiltrate what he believes to be the perpetrators. Despite his obviously cloistered sense of regional conflicts, OSS 117 blithely reigns superior against his Muslim girl Larmina El Akmar Betouche.

Throughout his adventures, he investigates the murder of the agent, monitors the Suez Canal, checks in on the Brits and the Soviets in Cairo and even brokers peace in the Mideast by inadvertently stopping a fundamentalist rebellion. This is an odd bird of a film.

It flits between a Bond-like spy satire and a political editorial about the last days of western colonialism.

“OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies,” which features Jean Dujardin, Bérénice Bejo, Philippe Lefebvre, Constantin Alexandrov and Aure Atika, opened in Chicago on June 27, 2008 at Landmark’s Century Centre Cinema.

Continue reading for Patrick McDonald’s full “OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies” review.