OSS 117: Lost in Rio (OSS 117: Rio ne Répond plus)

Summary

Academy Award winning best director (“The Artist”) Michel Hazanavicius and best actor Jean Dujardin made this politically incorrect spy spoof.  With perfect casting and set decoration, the French secret agent OSS 117 (in a not so subtle reference to Bond’s 007) is sent on a mission to Brazil to track down a Nazi held microfilm containing the names of French Nazi collaborators during WWII that will embarrass the French State. France’s most famous secret agent will have to team up with a female Mossad Lieutenant-Colonel in order to capture a Nazi blackmailer.

Nothing here is to be taken seriously. It is reminiscent of the classic Pink Panther movies with an almost as good leading man as Peter Sellers in Jean Dujardin. The film does not spare anyone from James Bond to the Nazis to the CIA. The action takes place in the sixties, but the OSS agent has the mind of a man of the fifties. Completely uneducated, he substitutes a macho attitude and an obsolete moral for his total incompetence. Though he may be stupid, he is not malicious when he asks his Mossad colleague what the Jews have against the Nazis. Allusions to James Bond and Hitchcock abound. His Jewish colleagues call him " double one seven" and the ending combines "Vertigo" and "North By Norwest".                                                                                                                                

 Jean Dujardin shines in this part as the dumb, sexist, racist, chauvinistic spy!

Vancouver Premiere

Screenings

The Ridge Theatre
November 14 2012 | 09:15 PM