You know you’re in murky moral territory when your movie’s voice of reason is Saddam himself.
As the opening scenes of The Devil’s Double cut from archival news footage to a palpably false-looking Iraqi desert, Lee Tamahori establishes the central premise of his film. This is a hall of mirrors in which we are repeatedly reminded that we can’t trust the evidence of our own eyes.
Based on the true story of Latif Yahia, an Iraqi soldier who became a body double for Saddam Hussein’s psychopathic son, Uday, The Devil’s Double is clearly intended to be a kind of knockabout nightmare; a bad trip through the Middle East of the late ’80s and early ’90s as seen through the eyes of a bewildered bystander. What actually occurs on screen is a tone-deaf melodrama of abusive ugliness and poor taste.
Dominic Cooper takes on the task of portraying both Uday and Latif, with only the tyrant’s buck teeth, squeaky voice and slicked-down hair to distinguish them. That, and the visible evidence that he’s been digitally stitched into the frame. Cooper huffs and puffs to portray the manic energy and knife-edge insanity that made Uday so dangerous, but there’s something fundamentally inert about the performance. It’s an experiment that simply doesn’t work.
Partly that’s because Latif’s narrative lacks drama. Yes there are the women, the nightclubs, the escape and retaliation. But compare it to the similar story of Nicholas Garrigan in The Last King of Scotland and a flaw becomes apparent. Garrigan was fooled by Idi Amin – for a brief but crucial moment he believed in the dictator. Latif never sees Uday as anything other than a monster; without that seduction, he has nothing to learn or to lose.
In a broader sense, Tamahori has no interest in whether Uday – rapist, torturer, murderer – was a product of a system that permitted these abuses. Or whether, given the circumstances, there may be an Uday in all of us. Instead, he is a reductive, cartoon villain – a paedophile with an Oedipal fixation. You know you’re in murky moral territory when your movie’s voice of reason is Saddam himself.
Looks like a great story with a bold acting gambit on top.
What is this exactly? What are these horrible compositions? What’s going on?
One of the ugliest films for a long time, visually and otherwise.
View 7 comments
Joe
• 1 year agoHala
• 1 year agoAlso, the real Latif Yahia was supposedly going to play the role of Hussain Kamil, who didn't even appear in the film!
The film was set in Amman.. It looks nothing like Baghdad. I realise it may be difficult to shoot scenes in Iraq, however, they should've attempted to make the backdrop look similar!
As an Iraqi, I'm disappointed with this film.. Its too Americanised and has completely missed the point of what it was meant to portray!
shez
• 1 year agomattg
• 1 year agoPS: watch out for TV's Alexander Armstrong in the first battle sequence. Pointless indeed
SJC
• 1 year agoAlex
• 1 year agoI think Cooper's casting was justified because, having seen the film, I can't imagine anyone else in the role. Not so sure about Ludivine Sagnier, however; there doesn't seem to be any valid reason why Sarrab couldn't have been played by an Arab woman, although in some ways it doesn't matter since the whole 'romantic subplot' is the most unconvincing part of the movie.
Alex
• 1 year agoI didn't find the 'inauthentic' landscapes distracting at all. It's perfectly understandable that they wouldn't have been able to film something like this in or near Iraq. I've been to Malta and I recognised a lot of the locations as clearly being in Malta, but this didn't do anything to affect my enjoyment of the film.