For this movie John Gavin took over the role of Agent OSS 117. CIA Agent OSS 117 is Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath, of French descent but American-born.
A shadowy organisation has been masterminding political assassinations. OSS 117 has to infiltrate the organisation by posing as a notorious hitman named Chandler. He does so successfully. The given him another new identity, James Mulligan. To avoid confusion I’ll just refer to him as OSS 117 throughout.
The leader of the assassination organisation, the Major (Curd Jürgens), gives him a tough assignment to prove his mettle and his loyalty. He has to kill a United Nations official Heinrich Van Dyck who is brokering a peace deal between two warring factions in the Middle East. The assassination will wreck the peace deal and this will benefit the powerful interests who are behind the Major.
It starts slowly and at first it’s all a bit predictable. Secret agents posing as assassins is a familiar enough spy/crime trope.
It gets more interesting when OSS 117 meets the girl. Of course there’s a girl and of course she’s beautiful. Her name is Aïcha Melik (Margaret Lee). She’s the daughter of a rich banker. It doesn’t take much to get OSS 117 interested in pretty girls and he gets even more interested when for some inexplicable reason the bad guys instruct him to keep away from her.
Of course you never know if beautiful girls will turn out to be delightful companions or evil lady super-spies. That’s what makes beautiful girls so enticing.
The vaccine he is given is one of the nicest touches in the movie. It’s a time-lapse killer vaccine. If he isn’t given the antidote regularly he’ll drop dead. It’s a good way to keep new employees in line. It allows for the introduction of another villain, a sinister doctor.
.jpg)
A couple of goons have been tailing the girl. They could be working for the Major or for some other faction or could even be good guys. It doesn’t matter. It gives OSS 117 the chance to do the protective hero thing. Chicks always go for that. Pretty soon Aïcha thinks OSS 117 is a total dreamboat.
Thee are double-crosses going on and there’s the Major’s vicious henchman Karas to worry about. Karas took an immediate and intense dislike to OSS 117.
There’s nothing terribly wrong with the plot. It just doesn’t have quite enough twists and quite enough interest. It’s a bit too routine.
The fight scenes are done well but it needed at least one reasonably cool action set-piece and sadly it never eventuates. It’s like an aircraft that taxies along the runway but never quite manages to get airborne.
This movie has the cosmopolitan feel of so many 1960s/70s European genre movies. It’s a French movie with an American leading man, an English leading lady, a German actor as the villain and several Italian supporting players. John Gavin is quite OK. Margaret Lee is adorable and charming and is really the best thing in the movie. Curd Jürgens was a great actor and should have made a terrific super-villain but the Major never becomes the colourful larger-than-life presence that was needed. Look out for Rosalba Neri and Luciana Paluzzi in small roles.
Eurospy movies could not match the budgets or the spectacles of the Bond movies. The best of them, such as Special Mission Lady Chaplin (1966) and Kiss Kiss, Kill Kill (1966), make up for this by adding inspired craziness, surreal touches and lots of style. OSS 117 Double Agent by comparison is too straightforward which means that you notice the limited budget.
It’s all pretty tame. No nudity. Very restrained violence.
OSS 117 Double Agent is perfectly decent entertainment but for me it’s one of the weaker entries in the series. It’s still worth a watch if you buy the five-movie Kino Lorber boxed set (on both Blu-Ray and DVD) and if you’re a eurospy fan you simply must buy it. The transfers are excellent. It’s a real treat to see such movies decently presented in their correct aspect ratios and looking so good.
I’ve also reviewed the really excellent OSS 117: Mission for a Killer (1965) and OSS 117: Mission to Tokyo (1966).
No comments:
Post a Comment