|
The Devil's Double
| Released |
12 August 2011 |
| Director |
Lee Tamahori |
Starring
|
Dominic Cooper, Ludivine Sagnier, Philip Quast, Raad Rawi |
| Writer(s) |
Michael Thomas, Latif Yahia |
Producer(s)
|
Paul Breuls, Michael John Fedun, Emjay Rechsteiner, Catherine Vandeleene |
| Origin |
Belgium |
| Running Time |
108 minutes |
| Genre |
Action, biography, drama |
| Rating |
16 |
|
|
Double Trouble.
New Zealand director Lee Tamahori would be seen by many as a cautionary tale of what can happen to directors who go to Hollywood and get co-opted by the system. After making his breakthrough with the heartfelt Maori drama, Once Were Warriors, he went to L.A. and made the star-studded but dreadful Mulholland Falls. In the intervening years he’s made some real turkeys such as Next, Die Another Day and xXx: State Of The Union.
So what can he do with the real-life story of Latif Yahia? Yahia (played by English actor Dominic Cooper) is an Iraqi soldier, who in the late Eighties is summoned by Uday Hussain (also played by Cooper), the son of Saddam Hussain. Latif was a former classmate of Uday and it was mentioned at the time how they resembled each other. So Uday wants him to become a body double for him for security reasons. Latif initially refuses and Uday has him tortured for his defiance. Latif only relents when his family is threatened.
Under the guidance of intelligence chief Munen (Raad Rawi) Latif is trained to act and speak like Uday. He has plastic surgery to increase the resemblance and is introduced to Uday’s world of privilege and unrestrained hedonism. He is introduced to the foreboding figure of Saddam (Australian actor Philip Quast) and to one of Uday’s regular prostitutes (French actress Ludivine Sagnier). He quickly realises that Uday is a volatile psychopath who drinks and uses drugs relentlessly.
He’s also a sexual predator who likes to pick up schoolgirls and rape them. Latif is disgusted by his behaviour, which is all tolerated, as everyone is afraid to say no to the son of Saddam. As the years pass and the Iran-Iraq war turns into the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, Uday’s behaviour becomes more and more unhinged. Latif eventually realises that he needs to escape this world to save himself.
This is a frankly odd film. It takes a very political story and then seeks to strip all the context out of it as international events are shown only in passing with some cheap newsreel footage. Instead Tamahori seems to want to make his own Scarface, focusing on the styles and music of the Eighties with a backdrop of bad taste and lurid excess. Though the film is based on a true story, Tamahori has taken considerable dramatic license and the plots gets more and more ludicrous as it goes on culminating in a frankly laughable finale.
The film isn’t a total waste of time though, it’s enjoyable in a trashy sort of way. Much of this is due to Cooper’s game performance in the double role of Uday and Latif. He’s nicely restrained as Latif and wildly over the top as Uday, although the character’s menace is undermined by the fact that his high-pitched voice and prominent teeth make him look like Freddie Mercury. To use American sports parlance, Ludivine Sagnier is France’s most nakedest actress, and she duly gets her kit off for the obligatory steamy sex scene. Philip Quast brings some gravitas to the role of Saddam, but is sadly underused.
Overall this is passable stuff, nothing special but certainly not the worst film of Tahamori’s career.
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Jim O’Connor |
