OSS 117 | This bumbling spy's on the case of a clue

If you think Austin Powers should receive a 9mm retirement, then Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath — aka agent OSS 117 — is your guy.

Closer to Maxwell Smart or Inspector Clouseau than Powers, the swaggering boob who laughs at his own leaden quips is the hero of a sharp and hilarious deadpan French-import spy spoof that won the Audience Award for Best Film at the 2006 Seattle International Film Festival but is just now getting a wide release. Your mission: See it.

OSS 117's mission in Cold War 1955 is to go to Egypt and "Make the Middle East safe."

No problem.

OSS 117 (Jean Dujardin) is handsome, clueless, manly, misogynistic, clueless, violent and clueless. He's haunted by the blissfully homoerotic memories of playing on the beach with his old pal, Jack (Philippe Lefebvre), missing and presumed dead. 117 takes up Jack's cover job as head of a Cairo chicken factory and, with the aid of beautiful Muslim liaison Larmina (Bérénice Bejo, who vibes Claudine Longet), investigates Jack's disappearance.

In the process, he grievously offends the Muslim locals at every opportunity, giddily beats people up ("I love to fight!" he announces in the middle of one), keeps bedding a stunning princess (Aure Atika) who wants to kill him but can't resist, and discovers the unbridled joy of making a building full of chickens cluck by flipping the lights on and off.

Though it's the colonial French being specifically mocked, there's not much lost in translation. Much of the film's laugh-out-loud humor comes from the same ignorance of and condescension toward Middle Eastern culture that's landed the United States in such a jam today.

In one of the funniest scenes, the early-morning cries of a muezzin wake up 117, who shouts out his window at the praying holy man to "Shut the (expletive) up!" When the noise doesn't stop, he marches up the mosque's minaret and silences the guy with his fists, sparking a fundamentalist uprising.

However, a simple sweat-stripe down the back of 117's pants in the desert heat makes for comedy gold, too.

The movie comes from Jean Bruce's novels and a series of James Bond knockoff films from the '60s (although Bruce's novels debuted before Ian Fleming's). And the filmmakers reproduce the look of the period uncannily, from the photography and production design to the jaunty Saul Bass-inspired title sequence to a sneaky guy in a fez.

Dujardin is what really makes it all work, though. He's an absolute riot, with Conneryesque looks and physicality, and the ability to segue into utter goofballery with a degree of arch-browed suaveness. Even a throwaway moment of 117 breaking into spontaneous, ecstatic — and clueless — dance when he's supposed to be doing something else just kills.

A sequel is on the way this year, according to the Internet Movie Database. I hope there isn't another two-year delay before that one comes out of the cold.

Mark Rahner: 206-464-8259 or mrahner@seattletimes.com