Character page for the OSS 117 films.
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Comedy Film Series
OSS 117 and his allies
Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath / OSS 117
Played by: Jean Dujardin
Appearances: Cairo, Nest of Spies | Lost in Rio | From Africa With Love
The best agent of the Service de documentation extérieure et de contre-espionnage (SDECE), a branch of the 1950s French secret services. He has combat skills and certain amounts of luck, but he's also overconfident and, oftentimes, a nigh-clueless and culturally insensitive idiot.
- Adaptational Nationality: Hubert is American (with French ancestry) in both the books and the older films, or at least his nationality was left ambiguous at best at times. He became purely and unambiguously French here.
- Ambiguously Gay: Played for Laughs. In Cairo, Nest of Spies, 117's fond recollections of his time with his old buddy are cartoonishly homoerotic. He also has an overly disgusted reaction to the thought of two men having sex, which suggests that he's "protesting too much". At one point he tells Larmina that her charms are almost enough for him to "switch teams", although he's talking more about joining the Eagles of Kheops.
- Badass Boast:OSS 117: I've killed so many Nazis, I never bothered to count. But I always took great pleasure in it.
- Beware the Silly Ones: His enemies tend to exploit his stupidity, but they underestimate his combat skills at the same time.
- Character Tics: He has many exaggerated James Bond-like tics, such as a Fascinating Eyebrow or a tendency to lean on his leg with the foot on some kind of support.
- The Ditz: He can be really stupid, and he's completely oblivious about it.
- Expy: He's a parody of Sean Connery's James Bond, though where Connery's suave demeanor and swagger were cool in The '60s and still are considered as such to some extent (for anything that hasn't been hit by Values Dissonance since), 117 exhibiting them is deliberately Played for Laughs.
- The Fool: He's undeniably stupid and unaware of this, but he's lucky as well and always ends up accomplishing his missions.
- Genius Ditz: While Hubert is undeniably an idiot, he also excels at some tasks, usually on the manual side of things - playing the Oud, sewing a Robin Hood costume, or building a paddle boat while stuck in a tropical forest. And he speaks Arabic too (and sings in Arabic, even), despite his lack of knwoledge on the Middle East.
- Global Ignorance: Minimal knowledge about foreign cultures and geography are not his forte, to say the least.
- Idiot Hero: A paternalistically racist, culturally insensitive, short-sighted, overconfident and nigh-clueless idiot who's saved by his luck and combat skills when the chips are down.
- Innocently Insensitive: How he has a tendency to come across. He's not trying to be racist/intolerant of Islam or Judaism, he just knows almost nothing about them.
- Politically Incorrect Hero: A combination of chauvinistic spy fiction tropes, Deliberate Values Dissonance due to the stories taking place in The '50s, The '60s and The '80s, and 117's own comical ignorance of any other culture than French (minus playing the oud and speaking Arabic).
Larmina El Akmar Betouche
Played by: Bérénice Bejo
Appearances: Cairo, Nest of Spies
An Egyptian SDECE contact who's tasked to help OSS 117 for his mission.
- Girl of the Week: She's initially annoyed by 117's stupidity and Innocently Insensitive demeanor, but she grows to be his fling eventually.
- Ms. Fanservice: There's a scene where she's kidnapped, stripped down to her underwear, tied to the ceiling by the hands and gagged. 117 appreciates the view before freeing her.
Dolorès Koulechov
Played by: Louise Monot
Appearances: Lost in Rio
A Mossad agent who helps OSS 117 in his search for Von Zimmel.
- '60s Hair: Most prominently a flip hairdo.
- Badass Israeli: A very competent Mossad agent who also trained in the IDF.
- Girl of the Week: Like Larmina before her, she's initially baffled by 117's stupidity and Innocently Insensitive tendencies, but she grows to be his fling for the film.
- Hypercompetent Sidekick: She's a skilled agent, and not stupid at all, unlike 117.
- Nazi Hunter: She's after Von Zimmel to bring him to Israel and put him on trial there for his crimes.
- Sensual Slavs: She's attractive, and her surname "Koulechov" implies she has a Russian (or at least Slavic) Jewish background.
Enemies
Colonel Gerhard Moeller
Played by: Richard Sammel
Appearance: Cairo, Nest of Spies
A German enemy of OSS 117 during World War II, who set up shop in Egypt after the war. He passes as a cattle business manager.
- Ambiguously Gay: He has very homoerotic memories of his late comrade, which oddly mirror those of 117.
- Argentina Is Nazi Land: The "fled to the Middle East" variant rather than South America.
- Those Wacky Nazis: The "wacky" part comes from the homoerotic memories he has of his late comrade, which somehow mirror those of 117.
- Villain of the Detour: He's not affiliated to the Eagles of Kheops (the main enemy group of the film).
Von Zimmel
Played by: Rüdiger Vogler
Appearances: Lost in Rio
A former high ranked Nazi official who fled to Brazil with a list of French collaborationists as well as the plans of a hidden Nazi war treasure.
- Argentina Is Nazi Land: A straight example, as he fled to and settled in Brazil.
- Big Bad: The main villain of Lost in Rio.
- Expy: Of Adolf Eichmann
, as both fled to South America and were eventually found and arrested by Israeli Nazi Hunters (though this being a comedy Von Zimmel's crimes, which are most certainly related to The Holocaust, are not elaborated upon). - Nazi Grandpa: He's already quite old by the latter half of The '60s.
- Those Wacky Nazis: He's tried to created a Fourth Reich. Apparently he failed at it (there's no explanation about how, where and why), and so now he wants to create a Fifth Reich.
The Chinese Agents
Played by: Joseph Chanet, Patrick Vo, Jean-Claude Tran, Bing Yin, Chao Chen, Gérald Nguyen Ngoc, Chen Yi-Rhe
Appearances: Lost in Rio
Numerous Chinese agents who are out to kill OSS 117. The first wave wanted to kill him as part of a mission and got wiped out by 117 in the Swiss Alpine resort of Gstaad. The following ones are their brothers who want to avenge them.
- Asian Speekee Engrish: Some of them have a poor accent when speaking French, making it difficult for 117 to understand them on the first try.
- Character Catchphrase: The waves of them coming at 117 after the Gstaad incident all say "You killed my brother in Gstaad, you will die!".
- Outside-Context Problem: They pose a threat to 117 while not being affiliated to his main target, the Nazi Grandpa Von Zimmel.
- Running Gag: 117 keeps bumping into more of them throughout OSS 117: Lost in Rio, and they all say "You killed my brother in Gstaad, you will die!".
- Villainous Rescue: One of them incidentally saves 117 by killing Bill Tremendous since he was avenging not his brother from the Gstaad shootout but his brother in the taxi (who wanted to, you guessed it, avenge his brother from the Gstaad shootout) that Tremendous killed early in the movie.
- You Killed My Father: The agents 117 killed in Gstaad had brothers, who set out to kill him.
