The Devil's Double (2011)

Good concept, poorly executed.

Yo, there's no way for me to review this film without saying, take your *insert ethnicity + "ass" here* to see this film,like now. You have to see it in order to know what you're really messing with.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Film Review: "The Devil's Double" (2011)Here a completely by his leading actor Dominic Cooper, in best form, carrying the picture about the Saddam Hussein's son life style and the story from his inches alike body double the character Latif Yahia directed by Lee Tamahori, granted with a fairly-paced script by Michael Thomas based on real-life memories, brought together to an appealing thrilling psycho-drama, which gets ultimately enriched by the truthfully transcending relationship to the character of Sarrab, Uday Hussein's first lady, portrayed by erotic-striking actress Ludivine Sagnier, who with her laissez-faire acting style and immensely build up chemistry to actor Dominic Cooper, making the "The Devil's Double" a secretly to encounter piece of motion picture entertainment with minor suspense dissatisfaction, when it comes to the story's conclusion, worth the watch nevertheless.© 2017 Felix Alexander Dausend (Cinemajesty Entertainments LLC)

The Devil's Double tells the story of an Iraqi youth named Latif who is forced into taking a job as the "double" for the son of Iraq's now infamous former- dictator, Saddam Hussein. While the attention to detail and historical accuracy is not on the same level as HBO's iconic adaptation of Hussein's story in the miniseries House of Saddam, the Devil's Double does offer a different perspective. While HBO's show focused on the Hussein family and Saddam himself, the Devil's Double depicts the barbaric Hussein family from the perspective of an outsider in the form of Latif. Dominic Cooper takes on a dual-role in this film, playing both Latif and the primary antagonist Uday Hussein, the malicious eldest son of Saddam. The movie opens with authentic graphic footage from the Iran–Iraq War, a conflict started by the Hussein regime that lasted nearly a decade and cost Iraq over $500 billion. Although the war rages on, it is immediately made clear that the main character, Latif, is being escorted away from the front. Instead, Latif is brought to an opulent palace in two gleaming black Mercedes cars. It's hard not to pick up on the dark contrast between the reality of the war front that was just depicted and the palace that Latif is brought to. At this point it should be mentioned that most people with a keen knowledge of the Saddam Hussein regime agree that, despite all of the cruel and inhumane things that Saddam Hussein did during his brutal regime, his son Uday Hussein would have been far worse for Iraq. The Devil's Double offers a harrowing portrait of life under the thumb of a brutal dictator's regime. Uday Hussein, the son of Iraq's president Saddam Hussein offers Latif a job due to his striking resemblance to Uday. Hussein requests that Latif becomes his, "fedai", or body double to serve as a decoy in case of an assassination attempt. Latif naively refuses initially, but after being imprisoned and tortured, agrees, reluctantly. He eventually comes to understand the extent of the danger that is present to both him and his family. The job offer from Uday was never something that could have been refused. Latif learns just how cruel Uday Hussein really is from having to serve as Hussein's "fedai". Uday forces Latif to accompany him everywhere, while he cruelly tortures, kidnaps, humiliates, and assaults the people of Iraq for his own amusement. Nobody is immune to the devil's assault. Uday regularly kidnaps schoolgirls on their way home from primary school in exotic sports cars to rape them. At one point, he forces his dinner guests to undress in front of him for his birthday. Uday tortures men, women, and children for perceived slights and humiliations known only to him. Nobody can stop Uday who is the son of the most powerful man in the country. Latif is caught in the crosswind. The most haunting scene in the entire film happens when Uday Hussein sees a pretty bride wearing her wedding dress at her own wedding. Aroused, Hussein cruelly asks his bodyguard to bring the bride to his hotel room so he can rape her on her wedding day. The guards comply. After the harrowing event, the film depicts the bride bloodied and in a state of shock. She then leaves the hotel room and jumps off of the roof to commit suicide. Witnessing such senseless barbarity on a regular basis naturally takes its toll on Latif's sanity. At one point in the film, Latif slits his own wrists just to see if Uday will even let him die of his own volition. Latif is immediately given medical treatment and is basically denied the ability to even end his own life. It's hard to tell when the Devil's Double is being gratuitous and when it is being accurate. But the true history of Saddam Hussein's brutal and repressive regime is far from clean or sanitary. So perhaps the film's depiction of sexual violence and blood do justice to the gruesome subject matter. Some might feel that the blood and sexual violence should have been cut out from the film altogether to make it more palatable. In the movie's adaptation, the groom of the bride who committed suicide joins forces with Latif and together the two scorned individuals get revenge by making an assassination attempt on Uday Hussein's life. Unfortunately, in real life, the groom with the abducted bride committed suicide as well by shooting himself in the head at his own wedding. Uday Hussein cruelly continued to torment Iraq until he was eventually killed by United States forces in 2003. His corpse was shown on national television and his death was very much celebrated across Iraq. Those who can't handle this film's toned down version of the historical events cannot handle the real history.

Latif Yahia or gentle Salhi, a former Iraqi military officer in the category of Special Forces claims taken by Uday Hussein, son of the former Iraqi president like him. Latif Yahia, who belongs to the Kurdish nationalist, he grew up in Baghdad and studied in the same private school that Uday was studying there. Uday was forced in September 1987 to work like him and go instead to dangerous places, doctors performed surgery to the upper jaw in order to conform with the deformed jaw of Uday and so could not be uttered R symbols. After being optimized in many tortured by Uday at Guantanamo Radwaniyah in 1991, he fled to Iraqi Kurdistan in 1991 and then moved to Austria with the help of American intelligence and lived there disguised until the year 1995 and tried the CIA recruited to their advantage but he refused their demands, despite helping him to escape from Iraq, but he refused to be an agent for them and this Harepetth CIA was kidnapped in Vienna, Austria, in 1994 and tortured and imprisoned for more than ten and a half months and fled then to London and there subjected to an assassination attempt by agents of Ahmed Chalabi, who claimed that Iraqi intelligence was behind the incident and all of these events and others by gentle Yahya in his latest book, the role of the customer in the invasion of Iraq, the book banned in Ireland and the United States of America to the Scriptures of serious information affecting the rule Iraq after the occupation and the role of the CIA in the Iraqi opposition, which was located in London, the book named 'tHE BLACK HOLE support has donated the proceeds of the book to a private hospital for children

Rating-7/10The Devil's Double is a sinister film which although is that and whole lot more dark with undertones, turn's out to be a just about Good film and one that can make you think but also fear and feel for the characters. I watched it expecting gore and violence and yes you do get it, but I also expected lot's of poor shooting and driving scenes of which there are none and save's the film from a lower rating. So I thought it was just about Good film, and here is why I thought so.Story is firm and as I say it is dark and vicious but not ever scene is torture and gore(although it can seem like it as in certain parts of the film). Domonic Cooper is hard not to talk about in positive terms but we will get to him soon, otherwise from him this film is fairly good and the story holds up well enough to make it a good film to watch. I particularly liked the end because there is a certain thrill from watching well, you will see for yourself if you watch it but let us say the ending is tense at moments.Now to Cooper and what a performance he give's us from this, he play's both the protagonist and antagonist and serves them up delightfully with a kind of madness in one role and a more sophisticated turn with the other. His accent is great and he actually looks like he is from Iraq, let alone trying to make him look the characters. I didn't care the supporting cast and I felt they were pretty much all stale and although supported Cooper well no one came near to being as good as him here.I think Lee Tamahori did a good job here and made the film look nice with all that is going in it like. He used his ever present dark directing skill to master through a story of Latif Yahia(who's experiences are the basis of the film from his book), and bring with it a film not afraid to be called an even higher type of 18 film and touch the boundaries of what is right and wrong in film. The setting is perfect and some great vehicles are seen throughout, nothing to make the film better but a nice thing to look at mid way through the movie. Criticisms come in the way of well unneeded violence in some parts and stale parts in the other which obviously don't make this a bad film, it is good I said but parts can be pointless and for too long in this nightclubs and guards being shot, women being harassed and men threatened, you can't help but feel they could have done something else to freshen up the script and not just have Latif having a bad time.Listen the film is violent no doubt, I won't spoil the death scenes but they make you wince or look away if your of a particularly squeamish nature but all the same it can be the darkest deaths which really bring out a certain side of the character. I think people who enjoy dark drama and little action may just like this, and even more so than I did but nonetheless I feel people will dislike it and get bored with it, but don't expect to be bored just by watching the trailer etc.So overall a just about good film, give it a 7/10 and I think it was falling maybe towards the end but just held on to it's rank here. Go watch it and see for yourself the dark twisted mind of a man, son of a dictator and one who is crazy and sadistic, and his doppelganger.