Where did it all go wrong for Lee Tamahori? With his 1994 Once were Warriors, the Kiwi received worldwide acclaim for his brutal portrayal of contemporary Maori culture, but since then has struggled to reach the same heights with contrived genre-flicks (xXx , its sequel XXX: State of the Union, the Nicholas Cage vehicle Next) and effectively brought about the death of Bond as we new him with the dire Die Another Day. Tamahori’s private life also hit headlines, when it was revealed that in 2006, whilst dressed in drag, he was caught by an uncover LAPD officer allegedly soliciting oral sex, resurfacing old rumours about his somewhat saucy double life.
This is perhaps what attracted him to The Devil’s Double, the story of Latif Yahia, a man forced to become the body double of Saddam Hussein’s psychotic son Uday, with British actor Dominic Cooper in the lead as both men.
While serving at the front in the Iran-Iraq war in the late 1980s, Latif is pulled away from combat by the secret service and brought back to Baghdad. There he is reintroduced to Uday Hussein, with whom he had gone to school and always shared a similar appearance, so much so, that Uday claims him as his new brother and has Latif surgically altered to make the resemblance uncanny. Now forced into sharing in the decadence of Uday’s life, with cars, drugs, clothes and women thrust upon him, Latif struggles to cope with the heavy weight of losing his identity and living at the beck and call of an increasingly unstable and violent man.
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Sadly, the film falls at its first hurdle, perhaps a victim of its modest budget, simply because Latif and Uday initially look too identical. While this may seem a rather facile criticism given that the same actor plays both men, it is actually a rather serious plot point, with a montage scene of plastic surgeries that, to the audience, but none of the characters on film, is completely and utterly unnecessary. In the end, all it appears Latif has to do to become a brand new Uday is wear some novelty gnashers and pull his fringe down.
And things go from bad to worse, with Cooper’s performance in either incarnation not really up to scratch. His Latif, sounding too much like a British public schoolboy, spends the entire film moping around in his designer threads, never once cracking a smile or seeming to enjoy any of the wanton abandon in which he’s somewhat obliged to partake. While Latif is a certainly victim of Uday’s vindictive brutality, and nobody expects him to be happy with his lot, he’s too good, never once succumbing to any temptation and glumly sapping the film of its energy.
Cooper fares better as Uday, though again it’s a performance not without its flaws. Uday provides more to work with, intensely violent, spoiled, a sadistic serial rapist and child-molester, and Cooper shows flashes of subtle genius when coping with these serious crimes, at times frighteningly believable, and dominating the screen. But at other times, Uday comes across as a buffoon, a blithering idiot whose insufferable behaviour and grating voice make him appear like a pantomime villain, played for laughs. While this was presumably to counterbalance the graphic violence that comes midway in a nasty surprise at a dinner party, it actually works against the film, tonally uneven and poorly directed, belying Tamahori’s seasoned career.
There are some nice touches, however; French actress Ludivine Sagnier steals the show as Baghdad vamp Sarrab, and Anna B. Sheppard’s costume work and Paul Kirby’s production design really capture the sense of hedonism of the Hussein’s reign of glamorous terror. But a hero-worshipping ending and black and white characterisations leave this duo feeling less than dynamic.
2½ Likes
Released Nationwide: August 12th
Runtime: 108 mins
Certificate: 16
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