OSS 117: Lost in Rio

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

OSS 117: Lost in Rio (French: OSS 117: Rio ne répond plus) is the second of two French films detailing the comic misadventures of Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath, aka OSS 117, a bumbling French secret agent in the 1960s. In this installment 117 is sent to Rio to obtain a list of French WWII collaborators from an old Nazi. While there, he meets up with a foxy Israeli spy named Dolores who is determined to capture the Nazi. Both this film and its predecessor, OSS 117 Cairo Nest of Spies star Jean Dujardin as OSS 117, a character who might be best described as Sean Connery's James Bond, if Bond were both amazingly stupid and kind of racist. Based on a not-at-all satirical series of French spy novels.


Tropes used in OSS 117: Lost in Rio include:
  • Affectionate Parody: Of James Bond and other sexy spy thrillers of The Sixties.
  • All Asians Are Alike: 117 can't remember which Asian country allied with the Nazis. He also calls all Asian people "Chinamen".
  • All Germans Are Nazis: 117 has heard about the theory that all the German are not all Nazis. He doesn't think much of it. Ironically, he chastises Dolores for generalizing that all Nazis were SS.
  • Awesome McCoolname: Bill Trumendous, the CIA agent.
  • The Big Damn Kiss: Atop Christ the Redeemer. With fireworks.
  • Bilingual Bonus: The CIA agent swears at and insults 117 repeatedly in English, then laughs in his face. Also, his name is Bill Trumendous.
  • Call Back: The way 117 chases the villain down the walkways around the waterfall is the same way he chases the villain down the streets of Cairo in the previous film. He pauses at every intersection to look around before dashing off in one direction, even though this time he should be able to see the exact path to the villain no matter where he is.
  • Comically Missing the Point: 117 is sometimes utterly clueless and frequently misses the point.
  • Character Title
  • Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys: The CIA tells 117, "We're only allies when you need us to liberate you."
  • Chekhov's Gun: 117's fear of heights. Of course, he gets over it when needed.
  • Crosses the Line Twice: 117's anti-semitic comments are one thing, having a Nazi war criminal rage against the unfairness of hunting them down by quoting Shylock's famous speech...

"I am a Nazi. Hath not a Nazi eyes? Hath not a Nazi hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? If you prick us, do we not bleed?

Dolores: They want to make love, not war.
OSS 117: But both are possible.