Review: Watch 'The Devil's Double' for the terrific Dominic Cooper

Film: The Devil’s Double (A)
Director: Lee Tamahori
Cast: Dominic Cooper, Ludivine Sagnier, Raad Rawi
Rating: ***1/2

In the early nineties, Latif Yahia (Cooper), an Iraqi, is held against his will in Baghdad to serve as a body double for Uday Hussein (Cooper) son of the one and only Saddam Hussein.

‘Chosen’ by Uday, Latif’s unique job profile alternates between serving as company/entertainment to the megalomaniac and performing tasks that his captor wouldn’t deign to do -- like making public appearances.

In a world where sycophancy is rewarded and insubordination is brusquely stifled with unflinching brutality, Latif whose family thinks he is dead (Insha'Allah, is Latif’s henchman’s position on the subject), cherishes his own individuality.

With drug abuse, murder, paedophilia and sadism being some of his many vagaries, Uday (part Caligula, part Tony Montana, part Tommy DeVito, part Borat) is vileness personified. (The mind recoils at the thought that such a man could have actually been, hence the use of mostly fictional constructs to etch out his personality).

Latif’s presence and the rare occasions when he speaks his mind -- which reflect his rationality-- are a secretly welcomed irregularity among the administration given Uday’s orgiastic lifestyle. But, owing their allegiance to the hand that feeds them (and, more importantly, can have them ruthlessly crushed), Uday’s foot soldiers insist upon Latif offering his assent to all form of madness. And when the latter catches the eye of Sarrab (Sagnier), one the girls in Uday’s prodigious harem, things couldn’t possibly get any worse. Or could they?

Cooper's performances seamlessly encompass a stark duality across several scenes. On the one hand he essays the role of an insecure drug-addled fiend in the nadir of his depravations. And on the other, he plays a reluctant plaything who must perpetually look upon this abomination, while being assiduously morphed in its image and also having to partake of its misdeeds.

Watching Cooper work around himself and the other characters maybe the film’s greatest highlight.

Visually, too, the movie plays with contrasts. Grainy war stock footage and shots of a dusty run-down Iraq are interspersed between splendorous scenes of Saddam’s decadent brood. And while at times you wish that the story, aside of the phenomenal acting, could have been more than a depository of gore that leaves you squirming in your seat, Sagnier’s character throws needless eroticism and her presence, at large, serves little purpose in the film.

Though there is definitely is a ‘story’ that propels all action, the feeling, some might get, that the film’s violent embellishments arouses some degree of morbid fascination in their heart might dampen their experience. ("Don't worry," others will tell themselves "At least we're better than Uday!")

Based on the books by Yahia, one wonders which parts of the film had their basis in reality, and which were complete fabrications. Not that it should come in the way of you enjoying any good film. Which The Devil’s Double undoubtedly is.