Kerwin Mathews

(On Cable TV, August 2022) Much was made, when French filmmakers resurrected the OSS 117 series as comedies starring Jean Dujardin, of how the remake explicitly parodied the misogyny, bigotry and parochial values of the first series of OSS 177 adventures. Alas, I couldn’t help but find out by myself just how bad those original films were by watching the first four of them. Rather than give you a few intensely repetitive reviews of that original series films, let me stuff everything in a discussion of Banco à Bangkok pour OSS 117. Let’s get the basics out of the way: Adapted from a series of French spy novels, the film is clearly part of the Bondsploitation movement of the mid-1960s, as everyone was churning out movies that tried (and failed) to recapture the charm of the first James Bond films. While it’s technically the second in the first OSS-117 film series, it’s the first to clearly ape Bond, the first to go outside France, the first shot in colour with a decent budget, and as such the one that has perhaps best endured until today. As with Bond, there’s an obvious intention to shoot in exotic locations, to feature a dastardly over-the-top super-villain, and to make the protagonist an utter charmer. But there’s a thin line between charm and smarminess, and lead actor Kerwin Mathews is badly served by a script that would get his character branded as a villain today—while working with good intentions (that is—if you’re into imperialism), his dialogue alone is worthy of an antagonist. (The pick-up lines he repeatedly uses are horrifying.)  Since it takes place in Thailand, you don’t get any points for guessing the off-putting way the film positions itself as above the native population. There’s a bizarre lack of self-assurance in the way the series hedges its bets by presenting its character as both French and American—trying to play to the French audiences while being unable to conceive that a purely French secret agent could be just as interesting. Still, there are limits to how much OSS-117 can ape Bond: director André Hunebelle turns in a rather dull thriller that can’t do much with the screenplay’s slow pacing. Some shots of mid-1960s Thailand are still evocative whenever the protagonist is unseen and unheard, but little of this manages to make this retrograde film feel any better. If you’re looking for a review of the next three titles in the series, simply swap Thailand for Brazil, Japan and Tunisia, because the same comments apply. This is a series that is best forgotten to the passages of time—and if you thought Jean Dujardin was intolerably over-the-top in the comic remake, you really should not go back to the originals.