The film shined at the 19th Tokyo International Film Festival and eventually won the Golden Unicorn Award for Best Picture. It was a big hit at the time. "OSS117 Cairo Bourbon" is considered to be one of the most entertaining films in this festival. This French comedy mainly tells the story of a French spy in the 1950s.
It was 1955. In the first black and white overture, he regained some important documents from the Nazi Party ten years ago. At this time, OSS 11 was sent to the capital of The Arab Republic of Egypt to perform a special mission for French secret agents: investigating the cause of death of Jack Sparrow, a friend and former Cairo spy , controlling the Suez Canal, and maintaining peace in the Middle East area . OSS 11's real name is Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath. He has no clue about work but is very arrogant. He started his journey with luck.
The film is in Rome; the Italian passages are always cynical and humorous. For example, they parody James Bond’s antics when he was in bed. At that time, OSS found himself in the bedroom alone, and there was a cute The princess of The Arab Republic of Egypt Al Tarouk (played by Aure Atika); OSS did not intend to assassinate the princess, but decided to give up because he will reunite with her in The Arab Republic of Egypt. Although the two of them are in addition to love, in fact they each have a ghost in their hearts. Use a poultry breeding company as a cover-they did it very fashionable. At the time, all the spy colleagues of OSS seemed to be operating poultry. He set out to check the items on his secret service shopping list. He was not at all hindered by local customs, even if he only knew to sing one or two Arabic songs.
The film not only mocks the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabs and secret agents, heterosexuals, Nazis and Belgians, but also targets French who adopt colonial rule. All the symbolic meanings are OSS in one: complacency, An unpleasant smirk, completely ignorant of the local culture, and the way to save the world is entirely by fool's luck. The reason why the movie won laughter is also that it pays tribute to the TV series of the 1960s. It has learned the perfect production method and lively and smart, open ending, especially in the lip-synching deliberately bad performance (especially for foreign actors). The blue screen and the scenery in the desert scene are wonderfully used when shooting cars. The background music created by Ludovic Bource, the nostalgic style and the film complement each other, and also add a bit of homesickness and some irony to this comedy.
