Two words easily sum up the reasons why you should run out and see The Devil's Double this weekend: Dominic. Cooper. His dual performance as Uday Hussein, the dangerously crackpot son of Saddam, and as Latif Yahia, the man hired to play his body double, is a tour de force. Based in part on Latif's memoir, the film is a terrifying look into the world of a monster, and yet Lee Tamahori's shoddy direction saps it of any strength whatsoever.
Uday Hussein's life was marked with unbelievable priviledge, the son of the Iraqi president. This freedom provided him with no barriers for his psychopathic tendencies. Free to do as he pleased, Uday lived a life of extreme excess. Whatever he wanted, he took. Money, cars, women, he exploited the country for all of it's resources both material and living. This made him a prime target for assassination by any number of people, and so Latif was forcibly recruited(tortured) into being his body double. The only worse job I can think of is the custodian at a porno movie theater. Stuck in the middle of Uday's sadistic lifestyle, Latif is forced to stand by and watch as he kills indiscriminately, raping and killing any young woman he meets on a whim. The only one Uday treats with any respect at all is Sarrab(Ludivine Sagnier, at her worst), his hand picked girlfriend who wants nothing to do with him. She, like everyone in Uday's circle, is ruled out of fear of what terrible thing he'll do next. Latif can't flee, for his family and even Sarrab's life would be forfeit if he does.
Tamahori is the issue here, taking Latif's grimy, bloody story and making it look like just like all of his shiny, empty flicks like XXX: State of the Union and Next
. We never once really get into Latif's head to figure out what it was really like to be in such a hopeless situation. For all the violence and depravity around him, Latif was also in the lap of luxury. Was he ever tempted by such things? Uday was never Saddam's favored son, and in some sense Latif was more loved by the dictator. If only that angle could have been explored just a little bit. It's Cooper that make the entire film work. As Uday, he's a sick combination of Scarface and geeky momma's boy. Latif is his polar opposite, calm and calculating, always plotting his next move even when there are none to be found. It's a remarkable performance from an actor really starting to come into his own. He's also appearing right now as Howard Stark in Captain America: The First Avenger.
Latif's story is a unique one. I dare you to find anything like it elsewhere that isn't a complete fabrication. But it deserves better than this. A better director and a more thorough script capable of doing it total justice.
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