Form the get go Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath A.K.A. agent OSS 117 takes centre stage; he descends kitsch open plan stairs with a thick pile of carpet onto a warmly lit sunken dance floor with an assumed gravitation that suggests that any woman that he deems fit will soon be swept of her feet and into bed. And this is pretty much how the open of the latest OSS 117 film Lost in Rio plays out. Although before OSS 117 can claim the girl first he must save the night from near disaster, which of course is done with the ease of a consummate magician conjuring up his latest spellbinding trick. Suspend that belief for this is most definitely over the top.
The latest OSS film is set in a super retro Rio de Janeiro, where OSS 117 must hunt down Nazis and along his slapstick way unwittingly offend nearly everyone he meets with his arrogance, misogyny, idiocy, tackless bumbling, colonial and near racist ways that somehow win the day. Any further plot details really are superfluous as we all know how these spy spoofs go; it’s just a question whether or not the film is any good. And with its great period set design, pace, location shots, editing, score, enthusiastic acting (again Jean Dujardin is on over-the-top form) and untiring set pieces OSS 177: Lost in Rio is another ridiculously intoxicating flick directed by Michel Hazanavicius. The film may lack some of the first’s freshness but this is a minor asides. The mere sight of OSS 117’s raised and confounded eyebrows and the lingering shot of the aforementioned eyebrows is alone worth viewing OSS 117: Lost in Rio.
