Plot Details: This opinion reveals minor details about the movie's plot.



I thought that Dominic Cooper provided some charming beefcake to “Mamma Mia!”, having earlier been one of the stage-to-screen transfer “History Boys.” I haven’t seen him in “My Week with Marilyn,” but now know that he delivered three amazing performances in 2011, in another film (one film) “The Devil’s Double.” In it he played the all-out psychopathic playboy eldest son of Saddam Hussein, Uday, the soldier trapped into service as Uday’s double, Latif Yahia, and Latif trying to pass for Uday. One person Latif does not fool is Uday’s younger brother and the heir apparent, Qusay (Jamie Harding). “Why?” Uday asks. Qusay answers, “He was sober and wasn’t foaming at the mouth.”

Idon’t think that the screenplay, adapted by Michael Thomas from Latif Yahia’s memoirs, exaggerates the coked-up psychopathology of the son who was accustomed to getting away with rape and murder, etc. I wonder if Latif was quite as free from participation in Uday’s vices and entitlements as he portrayed himself as, and as Dominic Cooper portrayed him as. He abstains from cocaine and mostly leaves the women Uday acquired as he did watches and automobiles alone, with the exception of Sarrab (Ludivine Sagnier usually wearing a blonde wig over a black wig over her own blonde hair).

Jumping over the orgies, Uday raping schoolgirls and brides on their wedding days, slicing up his father’s aide and taster, and recognizing and helping shoot his way out of an assassination attempt, what I found least believable in the movie was the escape—on horseback to Malta? The movie cuts from riding off on horses to being in Malta (which also stood in for Baghdad in the movie) without shots of the horses swimming there. From a bonus feature with the real Latif Yahia, I learned that he had help escaping from the CIA.

I suspect that the return to assassinate Uday in 1996, which badly wounded him and curtailed any further phallic functioning, but the sequence provides some dramatic weight in regard to a guard Latif did not kill when escaping one of Uday’s orgies.

What makes me rate the DVD five-stars are the three bonus features, one on the Hussein “crime family” (the movie is very much in the gangster movie genre with Uday not a self-made man indulging himself), one with the real Latif Yahia, and one on how Cooper played many scenes with himself (green screens) as well as how the opulence of the palaces was rendered. It seems that during the shooting, Cooper often had to switch from one role to another. The actor is modest about how he met the challenges.

I have only seen two of the five performances nominated for the 2011 best actor award (and not the winning one), but IMHO what Cooper did is superior to both of those performances. He didn’t even get a BAFT nomination.

I was again (most recently, Love Crime) underwhelmed by Ludivine Sagnier, but thought that the other supporting performances were quite good.

The movie has something of the “Downfall syndrome,” making Saddam Hussein (Philip Quast) something of an ordinary guy for whom the viewer feels some sympathy (with a son like that, even if he did so much to make Uday the monster he was…). And, in comparison to Uday, Qusay was a conscientious (and all too efficient!) assistant tyrant.

I thought the movie was very violent. In the making-of featurette, Tamahori recalls that he planned to include more torture footage (Uday was head of the Iraq Olympic Committee and had underperformers tortured), but that that was too much for audiences. Latif turns off the video as soon as Uday leaves. And Uday finished off his father’s food-taster with an electric carving knife rather than a bullet to the head. The real Uday was so vicious, that viewers unaware of the sordid history would think the viciousness on display was exaggerated.

Also (with Cooper) deserving kudos was the cinematography provided by Sam McCurdy  Dog Soliders, The Descent). I did not listen to the commentary track by New Zealand-born director Lee Tamahori (once Were Warriors, Mulholland Falls, Die Another Day) who, obviously, is adept both with action sequences and confrontations between characters (whether played by the same actor in different takes or by more than one actor, as in the hospital scene of Saddam and Uday).

©2012, Stephen O. Murray

Thanks to Mona for adding this to the database!

Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age