L'entente cordiale (2006)

Viscount François de La Conche (Christian Clavier) and Jean-Pierre Moindrau (Daniel Auteuil) are two men in their fifties who have nothing in common. De La Conche is a rigid, aristocratic man with a high opinion of France and of himself. He lives in a dilapidated manor that his in-laws want to turn into a thalassotherapy center against his wishes. A former diplomat, he has been shunned by the profession ever since he let Georgian trafficker Victor Zilenko escape during a mission eight years earlier. Moindrau is a quadrilingual interpreter at UNESCO. A great seducer, compulsive liar, and spendthrift who lives beyond his means, he gets by by borrowing money from his former mistresses. When Victor Zilenko steals the Exterminator electronic chip from a Russian research center and France is tasked with paying a $25 million ransom, the Georgian makes it one of his conditions that he will deal with only one man: François de La Conche. Recalled by the DGSE, De La Conche readily accepts and suggests that he be accompanied by a translator he knows: Elliot de Saint-Hilaire (François Morel). But Elliot stubbornly refuses the job, knowing De La Conche's rigid nature and still suffering physical aftereffects from their previous missions together. He takes the opportunity to have Jean-Pierre Moindrau replace him. Moindrau is delighted, since he sees it as a chance to spend a free weekend with his young fiancée, Punam (Shelley Conn), who lives in London, where the deal with Zilenko is to take place. The two men’s first meeting, aboard the Eurostar departing from Gare du Nord, immediately reveals their mutual antipathy. Moindrau and De La Conche arrive in London in the early evening and check into a suite at the grand Donovan Hotel, in the heart of the city. They are watched over by a surveillance team led by Lieutenant Colonel Jean-Éric Berthaud (François Levantal), who has filled the room with cameras. The plan is simple: De La Conche and Moindrau are to retrieve the chip, pay the $25 million, and return to France at once so they can hand it back to the Russians. Moindrau is extremely disappointed because he had imagined spending a romantic night alone with Punam in his suite, but now he has to share it with De La Conche. Nevertheless, he takes the opportunity to place a lavish room-service order at the taxpayer’s expense, much to the Viscount’s irritation, further straining their relationship. The two men are unaware that Colonel Berthaud is a traitor who wants to steal the chip and sell it for his own benefit to an influential member of the Indian embassy. To that end, he deliberately jams the surveillance footage. When Victor Zilenko arrives, the exchange proceeds cordially, although one of the trafficker’s henchmen discreetly takes photographs of Moindrau. But once the exchange is over, a heavily armed commando bursts into the suite. In the ensuing shootout, Zilenko and the dozen or so people in the room are killed, including the attackers. De La Conche and Moindrau are the only survivors. Amid the confusion, the Viscount implants the chip in the interpreter’s arm so it will not fall into the wrong hands. However, De La Conche has forgotten the effects of the Exterminator chip, which had been explained to him during his DGSE briefing: once implanted in a human body, the chip makes its carrier insensitive to all forms of pain for 12 hours. After that time, if it has not been removed, the person explodes. The two protagonists flee the Donovan Hotel and wander through the streets of London. Meanwhile, Scotland Yard arrives at the scene, quickly realizes that it is an espionage case, and finds the photographs of Jean-Pierre Moindrau taken by the traffickers. To avoid creating a diplomatic incident, the inspectors decide to present the case to the press as a massacre carried out by Moindrau, now dubbed the “Donovan Butcher” by the media. Meanwhile, Punam finds De La Conche and Moindrau in the street and takes them to hide at her home. Of Indian origin, she lives with her family, who work as staff at the embassy. During dinner, Moindrau begins to notice the chip’s effects when he feels nothing as he eats chili. De La Conche steps away to make a phone call and contacts Colonel Berthaud, who tells him the grim fate awaiting Moindrau if the chip is not removed within 12 hours. The Viscount hastens to warn the interpreter and decides to do everything he can to help Moindrau, both to recover the chip and because, despite their profound differences in character, he absolutely does not want him to die. But while they are testing Moindrau’s new total insensitivity, a television report about the “Donovan Butcher” forces them to flee and wander the streets again. With the train stations under surveillance, making a return to France impossible, they end up spending the rest of the night in a taxi, looking in vain for a hospital that Scotland Yard is not watching. Only at daybreak do they find a solution to their problem: a morgue. Since Moindrau is still wanted, De La Conche hides him in a body bag, while disguising himself as an orderly bringing a new corpse to the morgue. After a few complications, he takes a member of staff hostage and forces them to remove the chip from Moindrau’s arm. Once the chip is removed, Moindrau regains his ability to feel pain and is now safe. The two men share a rare friendly moment, which quickly fades. After stealing a wheelchair and a disguise for Moindrau, they tie up and lock the doctor away, then escape. De La Conche calls Colonel Berthaud to tell him that he now has the Exterminator chip in his possession and to get further instructions. Berthaud tells him to use his network of contacts to find a safe place to wait until he can hand over the chip, then tells his superiors that De La Conche is the traitor who caused the massacre in order to steal it. He asks for and obtains authorization to retrieve it by any means, thereby providing a pretext for the diplomat’s future assassination when he comes to hand over Exterminator. Meanwhile, De La Conche and Moindrau, still in a wheelchair, go to London Zoo to meet its director, Gwendoline (Wendy) McFarlane (Jennifer Saunders), De La Conche’s former childhood sweetheart, hoping to be safe there.