Johnny English

Johnny English is a 2003 spy action comedy film directed by Peter Howitt and written by Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and William Davies. Produced by StudioCanal and Working Title Films, the film centres on a clumsy MI7 agent in a mission to find the thieves of the Crown Jewels and retrieve the regalia.

Starring Rowan Atkinson in the title role along with Natalie Imbruglia, Ben Miller and John Malkovich, it is the first instalment of the Johnny English film series and serves as a parody and homage to the spy genre, mainly the James Bond film series, as well as Atkinson's Mr. Bean character. The character is also related to Atkinson's bumbling spy character from a series of adverts in the United Kingdom for Barclaycard in the 1990s. The film was filmed in various locations across England, particularly in London and Buckinghamshire. Specific sites include Mentmore Towers, the Maughan Library, and the Freemason's Hall. The movie's climax was filmed on the French Riviera.

Distributed by Universal Pictures, the film was released theatrically in the United States on 18 July 2003. The film received mixed reviews from critics but was commercially successful and grossed $160 million worldwide against a budget of $40 million. The film was released in the United Kingdom on 11 April 2003 and topped the country's box office for the next three weekends, before being overtaken by X2. It was followed by two sequels, Johnny English Reborn (2011) and Johnny English Strikes Again (2018).

Kindhearted but clumsy MI7 agent Johnny English dreams of becoming Agent One, MI7's top agent. After the real Agent One is killed, followed by all of MI7's remaining agents at his funeral, both due to English's incompetence, he is left as the sole surviving agent capable of finishing Agent One's mission.

Assigned to thwart a plot to steal the newly restored Crown Jewels at an event hosted by French prison magnate Pascal Sauvage, English meets the mysterious Lorna Campbell at the jewels' unveiling at the Tower of London. During a sudden blackout, the Crown Jewels are stolen and English accidentally knocks out the head of security. He fights an imaginary assailant to cover his mistakes, and gives a false description of the unseen suspect to MI7 head Pegasus.

English and his assistant Angus Bough follow a tunnel dug beneath the jewel's display case and confront German thieves Dieter Klein and Klaus Vendetta, who escape in a hearse. English loses them by pursuing a different hearse and ends up gatecrashing a funeral, until Bough saves him by having him pretend he is an escaped mental patient.

Sauvage is revealed to be Klein and Vendetta's employer, and instructs the thieves to eliminate English. Pegasus - a friend of Sauvage - refuses to believe English and Bough's claims that Sauvage is involved and orders them to exclude him from the investigation. English and Bough are attacked by Vendetta, who escapes when English mistakenly attacks Bough. English again encounters Campbell and, having seen her at two crime scenes, his suspicions deepen when no record of her can be found on a single government computer.

Determined to expose Sauvage, English and Bough infiltrate his headquarters and learn that Sauvage, a descendant of Charles Edward Stuart, plans to make himself king using an impostor Archbishop of Canterbury. English observes that the fake Archbishop has a tattoo on his backside saying Jesus is coming – look busy. The pair encounter and try to interrogate Klein, but English accidentally injects him and himself with a powerful muscle relaxant. Campbell appears and rescues the two, revealing herself to be an Interpol agent also tracking Sauvage. Attempting to inform Pegasus of his discoveries, English crashes a reception hosted by Sauvage and makes a fool of himself due to the relaxant. As a result, he is dishonourably removed from the case by Pegasus.