[2] This fast-moving spoof of James Bond-type films features striking location photography by Edmond Séchan of Rio de Janeiro, Brasília, and Paris.

As airman Adrien Dufourquet embarks on an 8-day leave in Paris to see his fiancée Agnès, two South American Indians steal an Amazonian statuette from the Musée de l'Homme and force Professor Catalan, the curator, into their car.

Adrien arrives in time to see the Indians abducting Agnès, the only one who knows the location of her father's statuette, and he pursues them to the airport where he steals a ticket and boards the same plane.

In a stolen car provided by Sir Winston, Agnès and Adrien drive to Brasília to meet Senhor de Castro, a wealthy industrialist who possesses the third statuette.

[6] In contemporary reviews, the Monthly Film Bulletin reviewed an English-dubbed version; one of its critics noted that the "One may feel that [de Broca]'s inconsequential wit is better suited to the smaller, more parochial atmosphere of his earlier films, but here he is involved in a big budget production aimed at a huge audience, and perhaps we ought to be grateful that so much of his personal style has survived, even in the carefully dubbed and slightly shortened American version now presented.

and praised the two leads, specifically Belmondo who "outdid Douglas Fairbanks in agility, Harold Lloyd in cliffhanging, and James Bond in indestructibility".

[8] In a retrospective review, The Dissolve gave the film a rating of three and a half stars out of five, noting that "the action moves along at such a rapid clip, there’s little time to worry about how much the plot relies on incredible coincidences".

For example, at one point in The Man from Rio, Catalan steals a car while it is being repaired, an event that appears in both Tintin in the Land of the Soviets and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.