This is interesting. Since our last post we have discovered another Back Row Critics. They cleverly added a hyphen to their URL and a number to their twitter account. But otherwise it is a couple of guys writing reviews about movies. How spectacularly original. I'll admit, their blog is slightly more advanced than ours, and for that I say good job.
Today's movie is The Devil's Double, directed by Lee Tamahori and starring Dominic Cooper as both Uday Saddam Hussein (that's Saddam's son) and Latif Yahia, the guy hired(?) to be his body double.
Netflix: All signs point to 'yes'
Pick: Markury Poisoning
Mark: So I guess to start, one thing needs to be addressed about this movie. If you go into this thinking “I’m gonna learn something about the life of Uday Hussein and it’ll be neat”, just stop and delete that thought. This is a very much fictionalized and dramatized account of Uday Hussein’s life. Not only that, but many people have questioned the legitimacy of Latif Yahia’s claims that he was Uday’s double.
Now, speaking purely about the film's story, I thought it was very entertaining, driven by a very solid performance by Dominic Cooper in the dual role of Uday and Latif. He handles the insanity of Uday and the stoic nature of Latif very well, though I thought he was much more engaging as Uday. So much of this looks at the glitz and gluttony of Uday’s life and how Latif and his beliefs are juxtaposed against it.
Dylan: I’m on the fence about this one. It had some positives, but I couldn’t help get bogged down by the negatives. Maybe I sort of fell for what you mentioned there about expecting too much historical fact, but it seemed to me that Uday’s general craziness was pushed to the laughable. And I didn’t see the point in that. They wanted to illustrate how disturbingly evil and insane this guy is. Some of the shit he did in real life was more horrific than anything he did in the movie. I wish they had taken the character to a much (and more realistic) darker place, which would have made Latif's torment more believable. Instead Uday drags Latif to parties and refuses to let him leave.
However, to some extent, the theme of Uday basically wanting a clone of himself to hang out and possibly have sex with, because he is that narcissistic, and how Latif realizes and deals with this, is pretty interesting.
Mark: I agree with you. It wasn’t until I read about the fictionalized nature of the movie, did I look back on the movie and find those over the top moments with Uday more entertaining. The story paints Uday as just an unhinged individual, but he seems more violently awkward than evil. Only once did I really see the evil of Uday and that was with the girl he picked off the street coming from school. Short of that, he was a violent cartoon character. I just thought Cooper did a good job taking that role where the director wanted him to go. And speaking of the director, Lee Tamahori isn’t what I’d call a good director. The man who brought us such cinematic classics as XXX: State of the Union and Die Another Day should not have been behind the camera for this one. He focused on the exaggerated lifestyle of Uday and how out of place Latif is. For a movie about a body double, there was very little of it.
Dylan: True. And for the entire movie, Latif was introduced as Uday’s brother. Only at the end did he actually have to impersonate Uday and give a speech. I too thought that was weird and kind of silly. I think the real issue is that the themes were spoken instead of shown. It’s like what every high school english teacher says: “show, don’t tell.” That dude tells Latif at the beginning that the man Latif Yahia is dead and that he is now Uday Saddam Hussein (though I'll point out again that for the entire movie he was introduced not as Uday, but as his brother, and Uday continued to call him Latif). And so I wanted more of Latif struggling with his identity, and loss thereof. But I wasn’t really sold on the inner turmoil of his situation. Also, I would’ve liked to understand more about what Uday represented to Iraq. I guess I’m not an expert on that era of history. And we are told by that poor girl’s father that Uday is an embarrassment and a crappy leader -- and yea, I could have guessed that from his actions -- but I would have preferred a better explanation of how Iraq was suffering because of him.
Mark: And the movie seemed to want to create fake conflict when there was enough in the setting and characters to begin with that they didn’t use. Sarrab, Uday’s booty call/escort/lady friend, was completely useless to the plot and served as just sexual tension between Uday and Latif. Tamahori really seemed to just want to focus on the sexual and violent aspect of Uday instead of the far more interesting social/political tension that comes with him. And I agree about Latif and his lack of real turmoil. He never really seems like he’s trapped. I mean, he is, but he’s more than willing to die to escape. If we saw more of him being forced to play Uday and face the threat of assassination while him, we’d see more resentment and hatred from Latif, which ultimately would have created a better dynamic between the two. And I know I sound like I’m backtracking on what I said at the beginning, but I still enjoyed this movie, for all the faults of the story, or rather what could have been a better story.
Dylan: I agree about the woman. The dynamic between Uday and Latif had so much potential, which was squandered when the conflict boiled down to the standard love triangle. It was a lazy plot device. And the whole last 15 minutes of the movie (with the exception of the very last scene) completely destroyed the tension that was building. She became an important character because the movie needed her to and that was that. Question: I realize this is based on Latif’s life story, but does the film itself come from a book, do you know?
Mark: It is based on Latif’s books about the time he spent as the body double. Though the movie clearly says that it’s a dramatized version of that history. A history, as I pointed out, that has been questioned and in some ways disproved.
Dylan: Yea, I was just wondering. The whole time I was watching it, it felt like more of a book than a movie. Even if it was partially fictionalized.
Mark: The movie feels distant; like it’s afraid to touch the very delicate issues and darker tones, and rather sticks with the standard affair of violence and sex. And the ending did kind of bug me. If people hated him so much, why wouldn’t it have happened before? Even if the people were more afraid of retribution from his father, why couldn’t an enemy of the state have been able to do it? The real tension was Latif being trapped by Uday, but then the end just deflates that completely.
Dylan: I will say that some of the visuals are nice. Something about pools and swanky clothes in the desert. I don’t know. But it was shot fairly well.
Mark: Yeah, if there’s one thing Tamahori can do, it’s create very entertaining visuals and for what he was going for -- the glitz and extravagance of Uday and the world he seems to inhabit -- he did very well.
Dylan: ...I’m afraid I’m running out of things to talk about already. What other points you got?
Mark: It’s funny how we go from real heady films like Cosmopolis and Holy Motors that get so much out of us to something that we can dissect thoroughly and quickly. It’s nice. And not much else. Just to finish I’ll still say I recommend this. It was, for all it’s flaws in what it could have done to be much better, an entertaining movie. Once you get that this isn’t a history lesson, Dominic Cooper’s portrayal of Uday Hussein as an over the top cartoon psycho is fun. And there are more than a few really engaging scenes throughout to keep you going. At least there were for me.
Dylan: Is Dominic Cooper in anything else?
Mark: Howard Stark in Captain America.
Dylan: Oh it’s THAT guy! Oh okay, interesting.
Anyways, yea I guess I would recommend this one. Maybe. Though maybe it would be better with a drink or two.
Mark: Yeah, it’d probably go better with some drinks. But, how about a little trivia to end it off? Now, this'll be hard cause it’s not really about movies, but I feel this has to be brought up. Lee Tamahori was arrested in 2006. Take a guess as to what his crime was.
Dylan: XXX: State of the Union?
Mark: Haha, he should’ve, really. But alas, no. He was in fact arrested for allegedly offering an undercover cop oral sex. While dressed as a woman.
Dylan: That. Is. Brilliant.
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So, in retrospect, the title of this movie is pretty misleading. But not as misleading as the blurb on the cover: "what do you get a 'prince' that has everything?" What is it, his birthday? Maybe you can't answer that, because you haven't seen the movie. Spoiler alert: It's not his birthday. That question really doesn't apply to the movie at all.
Anyways, fear not, summer is quickly approaching. And with it comes blockbuster movie season. So if you're starting to get bored with us jawing on and on about movies you've never heard of, you just wait. Soon we'll be talking about movies that absolutely everyone already knows everything about. Starting, mostly likely, with Iron Man 3. Get your towels ready.
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