OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies

OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies (2006) is a French spy comedy you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Michel Hazanavicius and starring Jean Dujardin alongside Bérénice Bejo. A France-Belgium co-production running 99 minutes.

Cairo, 1955. French intelligence sends its finest agent, Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath — code name OSS 117 — to look into the death of a fellow spy and close friend. The city is packed with competing factions: British operatives, Soviet agents, loyalists of a deposed king, and a religious sect all circling the same prize. OSS 117 cuts through them all with total confidence and absolutely no self-awareness. The joke is that he is wrong about nearly everything and right by pure accident.

Hazanavicius doesn't just parody Bond — he reconstructs the grammar of 1950s French adventure cinema, complete with period grain, exaggerated heroic poses, and a hero whose blinkered colonial arrogance is the engine of almost every gag. The film launched a franchise and gave Hazanavicius and Dujardin the platform that eventually led to The Artist. Stream OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies on iFILM.