The gangster fairy tale is transplanted into a Baghdad palace — or is it the other way around? — in The Devil’s Double, the story of the Iraqi man induced into service as a double for Uday Hussein, the notorious, psychopath son of Saddam. Director Lee Tamahori has built an undeniably sleek, action-driven vehicle — the film begins with a town car convoy racing through the Iraqi desert and ends with a shootout in a Porsche — so much so that the question of who’s zoomin’ who extends to the story’s flashy framework. If the dynamic that develops between Uday and Latif Yahia (whose memoir is the film’s putative source) were better defined, or Gulf War-era Iraq drawn in as something more than backdrop, the balancing act may have worked in Tamahori’s favor. As it is, The Devil’s Double, a handsome and occasionally dazzling thriller with at least one dynamo performance from its star, is ultimately dominated by its style.
Latif (Cooper with a thick moustache and lightly modulated accent) is a working man from a good family when he is brought to Uday (also Cooper, with a Bugs-y overbite and a high-pitched Arab lilt) as a possible candidate for duty as his double. When it is made clear that the job offer is not really an offer, Latif settles into a glower that he maintains through his punishments (including surgery to enhance the resemblance), his rewards (life at the top of a dictatorship means the best of everything, as Darryl Hannah says in Wall Street, and more),…
Jessica Alba Jessica Biel Jessica Cauffiel Jessica Paré Jessica Simpson Zooey Deschanel Aaliyah
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