CHICAGO – If you’ve never seen the farcical ensemble theater chestnut “Noises Off,” you will see no better version than on the Steppenwolf Theatre stage, now at their northside Chicago venue through November 3rd. For tickets and details for this riotous theater experience, click NOISES OFF.
1960s-Era James Bond is Skewered in New Spoof ‘OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies’
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. View our full, high-resolution “OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies” image gallery. |
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.
Photo credit: Music Box Films |
Photo credit: Music Box Films |