The Devil's Double

The Devil’s Double (from Weird and Wonderful II: Fifty More Cult Films by George Hughes, available from www.freefall-productions.com) 

2011 / Belgium-Netherlands / 109 minutes

“This is the pain you give to the people of Iraq. Pain that never ends!”

Director: Lee Tamahori / Screenplay: Michael Thomas and Emjay Rechsteiner, based on the books by Latif Yahia / Director of Photography: Sam McCurdy / Music: Christian Henson / Production: Paul Breuls, Emjay Rechsteiner and Catherine Vandeleene for Staccato Films / Cast: Dominic Cooper (Latif Yahia / Uday Hussein), Ludivine Sagnier (Sarrab), Raad Rawi (Munem), Philip Quast (Saddam Hussein / Faoaz), Mimoun Oaissa (Ali), Khalid Laith (Yassem Al-Helou), Dar Salim (Azzam), Mem Ferda (Kamel Hana Gegeo).

In 1987, Latif Yahia (Dominic Cooper), an Iraqi soldier fighting in the Iran - Iraq War, is recalled to Baghdad. There, he is brought before Saddam Hussein’s son, Uday Hussein (also played by Cooper), an extremely unpredictable and violent psychotic who has selected the similar- looking Latif to be his double.

   It is explained to Latif that his duties will include impersonating Uday for public appearances that the real Uday considers too dangerous or boring to attend, including speeches to the troops. In exchange, Latif will be granted access to Uday’s privileged world of wealth (designer clothes, sport cars, etc.) and personal freedom (drugs, alcohol and women) but must “Extinguish himself” first- Latif will be officially dead and never again able to return to his home and family.

   When Latif turns the offer down he is immediately imprisoned, tortured and told that his family will be killed if he does not accept. With no other choice, Latif becomes Uday’s double and enters the brutal world of the dictatorship’s bloodthirsty inner circle. Disgusted at Uday’s worst sadistic excesses, Latif finds some sanity and solace with Sarrab (Ludivine Sagnier), Uday’s forbidden “Main” girlfriend.

   Eventually fleeing with her to Malta, Latif is ultimately betrayed by Sarrab and his father is murdered by Uday. However, Latif does decide to return to Iraq but not to resume his duties as Uday’s double- instead he plans to assassinate him…

   Rather than an historical or war film, The Devil’s Double instead approaches its subject matter as a gangster drama- which works so well because Iraq’s notorious rulers were essentially a mafia family that, rather than a business, owned a country. It was also a tremendous return to form from Lee Tamahori (the half Maori director who made his name in New Zealand with Once Were Warriors (1994) but later helmed Pierce Brosnan’s awful Bond swansong Die Another Day (2002), a strong contender for the worst film of the series).

   But the real standout of the whole thing is Cooper in both lead parts. Grimly determined as the decent man trapped in an impossibly bad situation and flamboyantly delirious as the unhinged son of a tyrant. In the role of Uday, he pulls off the difficult tightrope work of playing both the funny and frightening sides of a villain without overdoing it in either direction. The performance is up there with Tonies Montana and Soprano in that respect (and, for my money, only Tom Hardy’s come close to it since with his Peaky Blinders character, Alfie Solomons).

    But Ludivine Sagnier is extremely good too (her French accent’s explained by a throwaway line of dialogue making Sarrab Lebanese). At first appearing as much a captive as Latif, Sagnier plays a lot with audience expectations as Sarrab’s loyalties appear to continually shift until her final, devastating betrayal- a sad reminder that there are those so weak that they will always side with those they think are the most powerful, even against those who have always stood up for them. There is nothing more cowardly or as pitiable and the scene is played to absolute perfection.

   That said, it’s Sarrab who delivers the line that nails Uday’s problem: “He’s a child”. As with the vast majority of spoilt fools who inherited wealth and power they never had to work for, the real issue is emotional immaturity. And whilst we in the west prefer to look abroad or to fiction for our depictions of such individuals, we still produce more than our share of real world specimens.

   As to the veracity of some of the more extreme events depicted in The Devil’s Double, the film offers a somewhat mixed bag and many of the details can no longer be confirmed or denied as very few of the regime’s associates remain alive. But it is true that Uday murdered his father’s friend Kamel Hana Gegeo in front of all the guests at a party and that there was an assassination attempt on Uday in 1996 (although in reality Latif was not involved in it).

    There are also claims that Latif never really complained about being made Uday’s double at all and actually thoroughly enjoyed all the money, booze and sexual freedom denied to ordinary Iraqi civilians. Some have gone even further, suggesting his memoirs are pure fiction and that he never was a double at all (for his part, Latif stands by everything in his memoirs and maintains that his existence was only known to a few high- ranking officials, all of whom are now dead).

   But between Uday’s death and his father’s execution, Saddam was known to discuss his son with the US military personnel guarding him and would tell stories about him that made even this film’s undeniably extreme depiction look fairly accurate.