(4/5)

Dominic Cooper has been more than holding his own in supporting roles for several years now, giving second lead Danny in An Education more depth than you’d initially expect, almost stealing Tamara Drewe from its leads as petulant drummer Ben Sergeant, and filling the shoes of Robert Downey Jr’s grandfather as Howard Stark in Captain America. It’s about time for him to shine in a lead role, and that’s precisely what he does in The Devil’s Double, taking on not just one lead part, but two. The devil of the title is Uday Hussein, fast-living son of Saddam Hussein in the glory days of late 1980s Baghdad, while his double is Latif Yahia, an old school friend whose more than passing resemblance to Uday makes him the perfect person to bring on board as Uday’s double – you know, in case anyone should want to assassinate him or if there’s a public function he doesn’t feel like attending.

Latif is pulled off the front lines of war with Iran for this, and he’s none too happy about becoming complicit in Uday’s antics, especially as Uday quickly proves himself an essentially amoral, psychotic individual who shifts from winningly charismatic to ripping someone’s guts out with a machete in the blink of an eye. But the Husseins are not accustomed to take no for an answer, and they make Latif an offer he can’t refuse. I don’t use those words lightly, because though it doesn’t aspire to anything like the sweeping grandiosity of The Godfather, in essence, The Devil’s Double is a gangster film, in the style of a family mob movie like The Godfather or Goodfellas – Latif may not want in, but once he’s in, there’s no getting out. At least not without great cost.

The film is based on a true story, a memoir written by Latif Yahia after he escaped from Iraq, so in some ways you know how this is going to go down (though the story has been fictionalized to some degree for dramatic purposes). Some of it is on the timeworn side, and a good bit of it is unnecessarily graphic, going for the shock value when we’re already drawn into the characters enough that we don’t need to be shocked to be compelled. Yet at the same time, some of those scenes pay off quite well, as when Uday takes a bride on her wedding day for the sheer hell of it – the way he treats her is brutal, but her eventual end is that much more heartbreaking. Still, we clearly understand what sort of character Uday is; we don’t need as many reminders of it as we get.

What ultimately makes the movie compelling under the glitz and brutality, is Cooper’s dual performance as Latif and Uday. He adopts a few obvious mannerisms to differentiate the two men, such as Uday’s higher, slightly more manic voice, but it’s not really necessary. It takes only a second of looking in his eyes to tell which is which, and even when Latif is imitating Uday at certain points, he’s convincing and yet there’s an undercurrent of disgust for what he’s doing that peeks through ever so little. It would also be easy to simply portray Uday as despicable and evil, which he ultimately is in the film, but Cooper makes Uday quite charismatic – more outgoing and more amiable than Latif much of the time. Even though you’ll immediately side with Latif in his quiet rage against everything Uday stands for, it’s not hard to understand why Uday gathered such a following – it isn’t only because he’s rich and powerful.

Most of the disappointment I had with the film came from Ludivine Sagnier, who is relatively unconvincing as Uday’s main girlfriend Sarrab who soon defects to Latif, but not without her own series of double-crosses to perform – most of which aren’t particularly believable. Sagnier is certainly capable of much more than this, as she proves in Love Crime (releasing later this year in the US), but poor writing let her down a bit, I think. The film is so focused on Latif and Uday, who treats Latif like a brother much of time, but sometimes as if he wanted even more, that Sarrab seems superfluous most of the time.

In all other aspects, the film was better than I expected, thanks to the decision to play it as a drama rather than an action movie. The lavish production design treats Baghdad as a resort for playboys – the film shows very little of the plight most of the country was in, but that’s not the story it was telling. It ultimately isn’t a political story, though it does touch on the Gulf War, but treats Saddam and his son as gangsters, which lends a really enjoyable dramatic twist to the story – it may be a facile way to approach the Husseins, but it’s at least a unique one. And for a summer filled with comic book superheroes and giant robots, The Devil’s Double is a nice alternative. It is still over the top and showy at times, and perhaps a bit overlong, but it still plays quite well and if nothing else, the mesmerizing performance(s) from Cooper makes it worthwhile.

Director: Lee Tamahori
Written by: Michael Thomas, from Latif Yahia’s memoir
Produced by: Paul Bruels, Michael John Fedun, Emjay Rechsteiner, Catherine Vandeleene
Starring: Dominic Cooper, Ludivine Sagnier, Raad Rawl, Mem Ferda, Dar Salim, Philip Quast
MPAA: R
Running Time: 108 min.