The Devil’s Double – Review

Reviews, Theatrical Reviews

Scarface with an Arabic tint

Latif Yahia probably never imagined as a kid that he would be more famous for who he looked like than who he was. Yahia, son of a wealthy Iraqi businessman, looked enough like Uday Hussein (former Iraqi dictator Sadaam Hussein’s eldest son) to be forcibly turned into his fedai (body double). Having escaped the elder Hussein’s brutal regime for safety in Europe, he’s now able to tell his story as a body double for a lunatic.

Dominic Cooper steps in as Latif, whose family wealth is played down and his background wildly changed to make him a young soldier in the Iran-Iraq war. Pulled from the ranks to double Uday (also Dominic Cooper), he gets a first-hand viewpoint into the demented world of Uday and his father (Philip Quast). As he delves deeper into the world of the Hussein family, Uday’s various insanities drive him to the point of looking for a way out that might never come. It’s akin to being Manny (Steven Bauer) in Scarface, which this film desperately wants to emulate.

Lee Tamahori, no stranger to stylized action, clearly sees this film as his attempt at an Arabic-themed Scarface. This is a film about a lunatic attempting to seduce a good man into his psychotic way of doing things. From how he sets up Uday’s descent from being just a bit eccentric to being a full-blown comic sociopath, the rise and fall of Uday mirrors that of Tony (Al Pacino) from Scarface in clear and obvious ways.

The biggest nod to that film comes in the various night club scenes, shot in nearly the same way with the same sort of composition and color palette. This is a bright film with lots of color and vivid-looking characters, as Tamahori envisions Baghdad before the fall closer to Miami, FL, under autocratic rule. As Hussein’s rule comes to an end, and we inch closer to the second Gulf War, Uday’s personality goes from a bit unhinged to full blown psychotic slowly but surely.

The grand unveiling of Uday’s inner psychotic, gradually from spoiled son of a dictator to an outright monster, is clearly intended to show us Uday as a Montana like figure with Latif meant as the casual observer along for the ride and realizing that this can’t last.

It’s an interesting character study for Dominic Cooper, who hasn’t been given a film with this sort of canvas to show off his acting range. He alternatively gets to be a full blown sociopath with no one to tell him no while able to play the observer silenced with the threat of violence. While one imagines this would be a film designed for two actors who look alike, as opposed to one playing both parts, Cooper manages to show us two very different characters with shocking similarities. From their speech patterns, and differences in accents, we don’t think of it as Cooper playing two roles. It almost feels like two separate actors who just look a lot alike.

With the Middle East changing radically in our time, The Devil’s Double stands as a stylized look at the way it once was.

Director: Lee Tamahori
Notable Cast: Dominic Cooper, Philip Quast, Ludivine Sagnier
Writer(s): Michael Thomas