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Summoned from the frontline to Saddam Hussein's palace, Iraqi army lieutenant Latif Yahia (Dominic Cooper) is thrust into the highest echelons of the "royal family" when he's ordered to become the ‘fiday' - or body double - to Saddam's son, the notorious "Black Prince" Uday Hussein (also Dominic Cooper), a reckless, sadistic party-boy with a rabid hunger for sex and brutality. With his and his family's lives at stake, Latif must surrender his former self forever as he learns to walk, talk and act like Uday. But nothing could have prepared him for the horror of the Black Prince's psychotic, drug-addled life of fast cars, easy women and impulsive violence. With one wrong move costing him his life, Latif forges an intimate bond with Sarrab (Ludivine Sangier), Uday's seductive mistress who's haunted by her own secrets. But as war looms with Kuwait and Uday's depraved gangster regime threatens to destroy them all, Latif realizes that escape from the devil's den will only come at the highest possible cost.
The Devil’s Double: The Outrageous, Over the Top Iraqi Scarface You’ve Been Waiting ForTired of those run-of-the-mill biopics and staid Iraq war dramas that avoid sensationalism out of respect for their subjects? Want a peek into the orgiastic, debauched, ultra-violent underbelly of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq? Director Lee Tamahori brought all that and more to an unsuspecting audience — and conjured his own comparisons to David Fincher’s The Social Network, naturally — with The Devil’s Double, the guiltiest thrill of Sundance 2011.
Based very, very loosely on the life of Latif Yahia, an Iraqi lieutenant enlisted to double for Saddam’s out-of-control elder son Uday, The Devil’s Double stars Dominic Cooper (Mamma Mia!) in a bravura dual performance as both the monster and his innocent stand-in. Forced into indentured servitude under pain of torture and threats to his family, and transformed into a perfect doppelganger through plastic surgery and mimicry lessons, Cooper’s stoic Latif watches disapprovingly as Uday rapes and murders his way through life in a coke-fueled psychopathic haze, a pistol-waving, sex-obsessed, wild-eyed, magnetic thug with a penchant for schoolgirls and no interest in becoming the responsible heir apparent to his stern, menacing father. Whenever Uday is incapacitated or lazy, he sends Latif to make speeches to the troops; eventually, when Latif has had enough, he takes Uday’s favorite mistress (Ludivine Sagnier) as his own. The two men are brothers in Uday’s perverse way of thinking, and the only way Latif will ever escape his enslavement is in death.
Though he plays fast and loose with the facts, Tamahori claims to get the most important details right: The well-documented horrors of life inside the palace walls, where even honored guests and confidantes of Saddam were in danger of Uday’s explosive, violent rage; Uday’s proclivity for abusing his power to kidnap, rape, and murder young girls. (A brief scene in which Latif comes across the sight of two Saddams playing tennis is a comically bizarre break from the brutality.) The Devil’s Double is a portrait of a monster, no doubt, and yet the movie indicates he’s nothing in comparison to his father.
That sense for the corruption and danger that hung in the air during the Hussein family regime is what lingers most, even after Tamahori’s tale flies off the rails and enters almost legendary WTF? status. First comes the melodramatic love triangle, brought to the edge of campiness by Ludivine Sagnier’s anti-subtle turn as the sultry minx Sarrab (perhaps the film’s most egregiously ridiculous bit of non-ethnic casting, but hey). Then there’s the bombastic lovers’ escape, in which Sarrab and Latif literally ride off triumphantly on horseback. But nothing compares to how Tamahori ends it all by channeling his own James Bond past, transforming the epic-scale gangster pic into an all-out spy actioner, slo-mo shoot-outs and sexy hero shots and all. (Or, as an astute writer pal put it, “It’s a real life version of Medellin.”)
Tamahori took the stage after his Sundance premiere to answer a lot of questions. Portraying Latif Yahia’s story in its factual details was never the plan, for starters. “I’m not a great fan of truth in film,” he explained, lauding Michael Thomas’s “odd and twisted” screenplay.
Though many of the scenes of torture, rape, and killing in the film came from actual documented events, the real Uday’s crimes “are all worse than we possibly could have portrayed.” (Tamahori sent a ripple through the crowd when he suggested, unflinchingly, that the unruly, power-hungry children of despots across the world should be lined up against a wall and shot.)
And finally, the first person to compare Lee Tamahori’s The Devil’s Double to The Social Network was, of course, Lee Tamahori. While Fincher pulled a digital facelift to allow his two Winklevii to share the screen, Tamahori and star Cooper (whose impressive turns as Uday and Latif are like night and day) used a variation on the technique to shoot the film’s many Latif-Uday scenes, filming a master shot in one character first, then editing for sound and throwing Cooper back in to play the second part in the same day.
Will Tamahori’s The Devil’s Double earn Social Network-level plaudits when it’s eventually released? (A deal with Lionsgate is reportedly close.) Probably not. The material’s just too insane. But let’s be real: That’s exactly why it will appeal to many. Because as much as The Devil’s Double is about the innocent man who lived to tell the tale, it’s the most revealing, rape-y, torture-filled, excessively gaudy inside look at Iraq’s unstable family of thugs that we’re likely to ever get. The film itself falls prone to the sensory indulgences of its maker, but at a certain point it no longer matters whether that’s by design or not.
The studio has closed a deal for North American rights on Lee Tamahori’s widely admired thriller, ending several days of conversations between the film’s representatives and multiple suitors.
Lionsgate is understood to have agreed to a substantial seven-figure MG and p&a commitment and is planning a significant theatrical release and awards campaign centred on British talent Dominic Cooper’s breakout role as Uday Hussein and his body double Latif Yahia. Ludivine Sagnier also stars.
Paradigm Motion Picture Group and CAA jointly handled North American rights and Corsan international sales head Pascal Borno closed a deal with Icon for Australia and New Zealand at the festival.
Lionsgate beat several rival bids and entered exclusive negotiations with the representatives in the small hours of Wednesday [26]. As first reported on Screendaily, Relativity and Summit both circled the project but did not pursue it aggressively. Several other buyers are believed to have come in with bids.
Corsan head Paul Breuls produced The Devil’s Double with Catherine Vandeleene, Michael John Fedun and Emjay Rechsteiner.
The Devil's Double is a wild ride and a real departure from previous work? How did you get involved with the film?
Into the film, you slowly realize there's a third character you're playing. Was that intentional?
By Sharon WaxmanHow much do we want to know about the world that ended with the hated war in Iraq?
But, no. Uday really was that man: the schoolgirls snatched off the street and raped; the brides taken in their gowns for a night of his pleasure; the torture of athletes when they lost – or when they won if they stole too much of the national spotlight. The drugs. The sex. The hanging upside down of innocent people for peceived slights.
He is a villain of epic, operatic proportions, and Dominic Cooper – in his first leading role of consequence - makes Uday a strangely compelling, sometimes mesmerizing and consistently entertaining monster.
The story of Uday is told through the eyes of a man forced to bear witness to this regime-sanctioned psychotic, Latif Ahmed, who became Uday’s body double.
Cooper ably plays both roles – the former, who charges through each scene on the verge of hysteria and/or violence. And the other, a quiet observer who seethes through the depravities he must silently accept, lending every scene an underpinning of morality. (Resistance would have meant death to his family, torture for him.)
Before the screening began I ran into an agent who described it a “Three Kings meets Scarface meets Goodfellas.”
That about hits it. Back in 2003, on the day that Uday and his younger brother Qusay were murdered, I wrote an essay about the stories that swept through Baghdad about them, having recently returned from a reporting stint in Iraq. (It’s still posted here.)
At the time I wrote: “Doesn’t anyone see a television movie in this?”
Director Lee Tamahori did see a movie in it; and some critics and buyers who saw the film felt that it played too much like television – melodramatic and unidimensional.
But on second glance, the story gives us a moral center in Latif and a context for thinking about the consequences of our foreign policy – not just the 2003 invasion, but the choice not to topple Saddam back in 1990, and our support of that regime through the Iran-Iraq conflict.
Those decisions helped create this monster. Uday and his brother were finally hunted down and shot. But it took until 2003, and the terror they wrought on their own people was no small price for the residents of this ancient land.
As Tamahori said in the q&a after the premiere screening this weekend, “There’s not much of a message here other than: Despots have children that run out of control and we should put them up against the wall and shoot them.”
Count on this one getting bought, and appearing in theaters some time this year.
The Bottom Line
Excellent lead performance tops a vivid but one-dimensional look at the double for Saddam's satanic son.
Undeniably fascinating as a visit to a world you’d never have wanted to have come near in real life -- that of the Hussein family’s inner sanctum -- the film falls crucially short by not providing a window into the mind of the man who was coerced into acting as his double. Dominic Cooper’s riveting double performance and the lurid, beyond-"Scarface" sensationalism are the main selling points for a film to which it will still be difficult to lure a wide public.
A drunken, drug-fueled, gun-toting, short-tempered party boy, torturer, rapist and murderer, Uday, with unlimited funds at his disposal and never properly reined in by his disapproving father, would routinely cruise schools in his Porsche or Ferrari, pick up 14-year-old girls, have his way with them and then have their bodies dumped by a roadside. On a whim, he'd drop by a wedding ceremony and demand to defile the bride on the spot. Intensely psychotic, he threw endless bacchanalian parties, reveled in torture videos and avoided anything resembling official responsibilities.
He was widely despised, of course, and, as with his father, it was thought advisable that he have a double to cover for him, throw off potential attackers and so on. In the late 1980s, toward the end of Iraq’s long war with Iran, it was the misfortune of army lieutenant Latif Yahia to be handpicked to fill the job, the full dimensions of which would have been hard to foresee.
With the fate of his family held over him if he declines, Latif undergoes plastic surgery and dental work to enhance the resemblance, learns to match Uday’s higher-pitched voice and vocal patterns, acquires a double of his wardrobe and is installed in a life of luxury, including a selection of women, while always being on call if needed. Mostly, he's just another member of Uday's sinister entourage, passed off humorously as Saddam's "third son" (curiously little is seen of the dictator's actual other son, Qusay).
Guided through his paces by a wise old mentor, Munem (Raad Rawi), Latif clearly disapproves of Uday and his sleazy lifestyle, but there’s nothing he can do except sullenly go along. Unfortunately, director Lee Tamahori and screenwriter Michael Thomas ("The Hunger," "Scandal") aren't able to make Latif the viewer’s confidant, to effect a viewer's personal connection to his strange odyssey; instead, one is simply left a spectator at a Roman circus.
One way to supply this would have been a Latif voice-over, perhaps in the style of Ray Liotta's in "GoodFellas." Another would have been a deeper, more revealing liaison between Latif and Sarrab (Ludivine Sagnier), Uday's main squeeze, who dares to launch a relationship with his double. Given that there can be no secrets in this world, how this affair is allowed to continue is never explained, but a more intimate connection between the two might have provided the lacking human dimension.
When the U.S. steps in to aid Kuwait, Uday rails against the enemy but sends Latif to the front to rally the troops instead of going himself. Outrage follows outrage until, finally, Latif manages an escape, leading to a dramatic climax that ends the film well before Uday's death during the American invasion years later.
Tamahori makes sure there's never a dull moment, although the succession of mindless disco parties, coke snorting, assaults on helpless women, psychotic rants and unmotivated violence has a cumulative deadening and depressing effect that is never leavened by an artistic vision or historical take on the grim spectacle. Although energetic and visually and aurally dynamic, this feels like a job of work rather than something more ambitious and felt from the inside.
With shooting in Iraq impossible, the filmmakers found an unexpectedly effective substitute in Malta. Having just worked on Green Zone, production designer Paul Kirby has done a terrific job creating both the grand exteriors and ornately vulgar interiors of the Hussein regime, an effect elaborated by Anna Sheppard's costume designs and Sam McCurdy's cinematography. Christian Henson's score and various source music choices are effective at generating a dark, turbulent mood.
In utter command of both roles, Cooper differentiates between the two beautifully, suggesting Latif's necessarily restrained natural cockiness and seething resentment at his lot in life while letting out all the stops as the mercurial Uday. He's really the whole show, although it's too bad the script restrained him from further illuminating Latif's inner self.
The film doesn't mention that, in real life, Uday and Latif had been schoolmates and that their close resemblance had been noted since youth. Furthermore, the third act particulars of Latif's escape and subsequent events seem to have been fabricated out of whole cloth. Latif's autobiography was published in 1997 but only became an international best seller after 9/11.
VENUE: Sundance Film Festival, Premieres
PRODUCTION: Corsan, Corrino, Statccato production
CAST: Dominic Cooper, Ludivine Sagnier, Mimoun Oaissa, Raad Rawi, Philip Quast, Khalid Laith
DIRECTOR: Lee Tamahori
SCREENWRITER: Michael Thomas, based on the life story of Latif Yahia
PRODUCERS: Paul Breuls, Michael John Fedun, Emjay Rechsteiner, Catherine Vandeleene
EXECUTIVE PRFODUCERS, Harris Tulchin, Arjen Terpstra
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: Sam McCurdy
PRODUCTION DESIGNER: Paul Kirby
COSTUME DESIGNER: Anna Sheppard
MUSIC: Christian Henson
EDITOR: Luis Carballar
SALES: Corsan World Sales
No rating, 108 minutes
If you want to win an Oscar, play a crazy ol’ depot. Forest Whitaker did it with “The Last King of Scotland.” Christoph Waltz did it with “Inglourious Basterds.”Now Dominic Cooper, the up and coming young British actor, knocked the Sundance crowd out last night playing Uday Hussein, the now dead (thank god) son of Saddam in “The Devil’s Double.”
The Lee Tamahori film is like “Scarface” in the desert. Cooper plays not only Uday, but Latif Yahia, the man who was forced to be Uday’s double during the wild days of the Saddam reign of terror leading up to the Gulf War.
This is no “Patty Duke” show. Cooper is mesmerizing in both roles, often on screen together. Latif–at least in this film–is thoughtful, has a conscious, even realizes early on that Uday is, as he says, “a psychotic.”
Uday is a delicious character. He rapes, pillages, and tortures. He is amoral sort of beyond the pale. Cooper never turns him into a cartoon, although by the time we see Uday and his mother watching TV in bed together, we’ve almost jumped the shark. Luckily, the Americans arrive in 1991. Uday is maimed–great scene –and eventually dies in 2003 when Saddam is finally deposed.
Whoever gets “Devil’s Double” will have an Oscar nominee in Cooper. And a wild ride. Let the bidding begin!
While distributors fight over “Devil’s Double,” one of them has nabbed Drake Doremus’s “Like Crazy.” A few wanted this sort of British “Blue Valentine”–what seems to be an auobiographical account of the American director’s ill fated romance and marriage to a beautiful youg Brit. Anton Yelchin and Felicity Jones are the stars; I found the film ultimately a little tedious. It’s all improvised, too. So surprise! Paramount paid $4 million for worldwide rights. That’s like, crazy. You do learn a lot about immigration laws, however, concerning well-heeled Brits and Americans. Not the usual INS story.
A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for character actor Dominic Cooper (usually relegated to dreamy supporting parts), "Double" allows the Brit thesp to tackle two juicy, red-meat roles, playing opposite ends of the moral spectrum as both Latif and Uday -- often in the same shot. In fact, "Double's" seamless split-screen work makes "The Social Network's" high-tech twinning effects look as old-fashioned as Friendster.
Within its opening minutes, Michael Thomas' script lays everything out, cutting from a montage of real-world atrocity (front-line footage depicting corpses and other casualties of war) to an attack in which Iraq Army Lt. Latif narrowly escapes with his life. Called to Baghdad by former classmate Uday, the decorated officer comes face-to-face with Uday's favorite mistresses, Sarrab (alluring French actress Ludivine Sagnier), and judging by the look she throws Latif, we know exactly where "Double" is headed before Uday even enters the room.
Uday's proposal is simple: He needs a "fiday" (a lookalike who can stand in for him in public), and Latif can either accept the job or see his family executed for his insubordination. Even when faced with this impossible choice, Latif resists. Did he really have such reservations? Though the film was inspired by Yahia's true experiences, Thomas and Tamahori treat "Double" as a dramatic retelling untethered to reality. For the sake of a good yarn, they prefer to think of Latif as a righteous soul, forced to "extinguish" himself (as he puts it) and mirror this monster feared by the Iraqi people.
"Double" panders to the basest tendencies in the makeover sequence that follows, depicting Latif's transformation with the same sordid approach seen in many an episode of "Nip/Tuck." Uday watches with mad-scientist zeal as Latif is stripped down, sized up and reshaped through plastic surgery to reflect his new boss.
The film shows a crass, party-boy interest in Uday's attitude and lifestyle, ranging from an unnecessarily explicit series of torture videos (including a power drill to the ear sure to inflame the MPAA) to uncomfortable scenes of kidnap, rape and murder. "It's all worse than we could possibly portray," Tamahori said by way of defense at pic's Sundance premiere, though one wonders whether auds really needed to have their faces rubbed in such vile behavior. "Double" further emasculates Uday by injecting suggestions of homosexuality and incest.
Looking on with disapproval, Latif remains upstanding through it all, and though it's easy to feel manipulated by the polar differences between Cooper's two characters, that dichotomy makes for great drama. Watching the swift, svelte energy with which Tamahori hurls us forward, it's easy to see the qualities that earned him the gig directing "Die Another Day," especially in the music choices, which favor electronic and rock over the typical regional sounds used to situate Middle Eastern fare.
Tamahori clearly wants the experience to feel extreme, intercutting blocks of vintage news footage from Saddam's invasion of Kuwait and the eventual American reaction to situate the Malta-based shoot and ground Uday's increasingly demented behavior. Whether brandishing a gold-plated assault rifle or snorting cocaine off the end of his knife, Uday easily could have lapsed into caricature, and one suspects that an entirely different, more satirical film might have resulted from the same script -- one closer in tone to "Dr. Strangelove" than "Dr. No."
That potential tongue-in-cheek quality might explain pic's preposterous ending, which indulges in a radical historical rewrite, or the implication that Uday's staff (including Raad Rawi as his security chief) might not have his best interests in mind. At any rate, someone else can come back and do a proper documentary later. Tamahori aims to entertain auds, and he does so with expert attention to all the crafts, especially the hair and makeup team that helps us distinguish between these evil twins.
4:01 PM, January 23, 2011
Lee Tamahori's preposterous House of Saddam thriller "The Devil's Double" is a gimmick movie whose sole reason for existence appears to be the opportunity to let Dominic Cooper ("An Education") play both Uday Hussein (the whoring, disco-loving, degenerate psychotic son of the fascist dictator) and a soldier plucked out of the ranks to serve as one of Uday's body doubles. This family of evil cowards, of course, was said to have frequently sent doubles into dangerous situations and to strike heroic poses among the people. Absolutely nothing about the film is credible except for the perverted sadism of Uday, but this vile monster's flaws are illustrated at nauseating length in scene after scene after scene of Uday disembowelling enemies, raping a bride on her wedding day and snorting cocaine. So what?
The movie is supposedly based on the memoirs of Latif Yahia, but anyone who's ever read anything about terror states knows how they work. Here's how they don't work: when Latif is plucked out of the 1980s Iran-Iraq war to be the devil's double, he at first refuses, then throws lots of tough-guy John McClane dialogue at Uday, confesses his hatred of Uday to his minders, steals Uday's car (twice) and his girlfriend (Ludivine Sagnier). After having seen a set of torture videos that vividly demonstrate what happens to those who displease Uday and his daddy. Talk about an anti-aphrodisiac: Latif sees images of a guy being treated to an electric drill inserted in his ear.
Maybe Latif is trying to portray himself as a heroic freedom fighter who conducted a one-man Resistance from inside the palace, but he wouldn't have lived 30 seconds if he had tried any of these things. And why would Uday drive around Baghdad with his clandestine double seated next to him for all to see? That rather defeats the purpose of having a double in the first place. Latif is there for cinematic reasons, to provide an audience surrogate to bear witness to the regime's depradations, not because it makes any sense for him to be present for Uday's parties and binges and picking up girls.
Ridiculous as all this is, the movie pumps it up into the realm of sheer fantasy during an absurd finale when Latif turns into a sort of Jason Bourne action man who easily steals a pistol and goes after Uday. Tamahori, who is best known for Hollywood hackwork like "Die Another Day," "Next" and "xXx: State of the Union," treats the horrors of the Saddam Hussein apparatus in exactly the same way. Such recent and horrific history is not to be handled in such a shallow, trifling fashion.
23 January, 2011The film’s more fascinating relationship is between Uday and Latif, with Dominic Cooper pulling off the dual roles admirably.When Uday decides he must have a body double, like those that protect his father, he recruits Latif Yahia (also Cooper), an army lieutenant with a striking resemblance, and makes him an offer he can’t refuse. “Think it over,” he says with a shit-eating grin. “You have 10 minutes.”
While the preposterous nature of the story could limit theatrical appeal, particularly in the US, where all things Iraq are a tough sell, The Devil’s Double should get its due internationally, with its salacious trappings and foreign stars driving considerable sales.
Based on a book by the real-life Latif Yahia, the film charts the man’s experiences within Uday’s ranks. Treated to videos of torture and threats to his family, Latif has no choice but to take Uday’s orders and sit quietly on the sidelines as the lunatic son commits a succession of outrageous acts, from slashing open the gut of his father’s confidante at a party to snatching schoolgirls off the street to rape and kill them. While Uday is pure evil, with no conscience or morality, Latif is his opposite: a trapped man who keeps his dignity.
Complicating matters is the presence of Sarrab, Uday’s sultry sexpot lover (Ludivine Sagnier), who appears to take a liking to Latif. It’s only a matter of time before Latif and Sarrab become romantically involved, though it may come as a surprise to know that their steamy sexual encounter occurs as US bombs are falling on Baghdad.
One can surmise that director Lee Tamahori (Once We Were Warriors, Die Another Day) and screenwriter Michael Thomas (Scandal) have taken some liberties with the facts of history. But such decisions only enhance the diabolical fun of The Devil’s Double. When Latif and Sarrab become involved in a shoot-out, steal a Mercedes, and then, after running out of gas, flee Baghdad on horseback, the movie tilts a little too far into campy terrain. It’s hard to keep a straight face when Sarrab says, “That night, we rode like the wind!” Sagnier mugs sexily enough throughout the film, but no amount of writhing can make the movie’s love story credible.
The film’s more fascinating relationship is between Uday and Latif, with Dominic Cooper pulling off the dual roles admirably. As Uday, his teeth slightly protruding, he’s a frenetic, giggling, high-pitched monster with a short fuse, who feels compelled to keep his newfound “brother” by his side. As Latif, he’s the honorable, stone-faced hero, cool as ice, waiting for the right moment to strike back. The special effects are first-rate, successfully sustaining the illusion of two distinct people on screen.
Production values, overall, are also top-notch, showing off the Hussein family’s gaudy playgrounds, palaces and pools in glossy Hollywood fashion.
Production companies: Corsan, Corrino, Staaccato, Tulchin Entertinment
International sales: Corsan World Sales, www.corsanworldsales.com
Producers: Paul Breuls, Michel John Fedun, Emjay Rechsteiner, Catherine Vandeleene
Executive producers: Harris Tulchin, Arjen Terpstra
Screenplay: Michael Thomas
Cinematography: Sam McCurdy
Production designer: Paul Kirby
Editor: Luis Carballar
Music: Christian Henson
Website: www.thedevilsdouble.com
Main cast: Dominic Cooper, Ludivine Sagnier, Raad Ravi, Philip Quast
Reports in the US media describe how the WikiLeaks Task Force - which has quickly earned the acronym “WTF” - has been established to provide an “extensive inventory” of all the information that has come out through a number of high profile leaks of classified information.
The task force is thought to be involved in calculating the immediate effects of the releases, such as the US ability to recruit informants.
This new role was widely unexpected given that the CIA is one of the government agencies least effected by the leaks, whose source remains unknown despite the continuing imprisonment of former intelligence officer Bradley Manning.
A reluctance on the part of senior CIA staff to share their intelligence on the same platform from which the leaks were taken has meant that only a few files out of hundreds of thousands refer to CIA activities.
The CIA’s system has always been separate from “SIPRNET” – the Pentagon’s classified worldwide three million-strong network from which the leaks were taken – despite most of the reports having a similar secret-level status.
To some within the agency, the leaks have justified the policy of separation – one that came under severe scrutiny after failed inter-agency communications led in part to the terrorist attacks in New York on September 11 2001.
“[The CIA] has not capitulated to this business of making everything available to outsiders. They don’t even make everything available to insiders. And by and large the system has worked,” an unnamed CIA veteran WAS quoted in the Washington Post.
“The consensus was that there were simply too many people potentially who had access [to SIPRNET],” another source is quoted as saying.
Julian Assange, editor-in-chief and co-founder of Wikileaks, remains on bail in the UK pending an extradition hearing in relation to an alleged case of sexual assault in Sweden.
Every actor has that role which would seemingly be impossible to understand. For British actor Dominic Cooper that would be playing Saddam Hussein's sadistic son Uday.
Cooper portrayed the eldest son of the Iraqi leader for the upcoming film "The Devil's Double" and admits to PopcornBiz that he prepared for the part "with difficulty."
"The man was a monster, a psychopath," he says, speaking at the press day of his new film "Tamara Drewe."
"It was terrifying."
Looking into the damage the Iraqi heir-apparent caused in his own country was incredibly difficult. Uday and his younger brother Qusay had a reign of terror that went unchecked in their country.
"He was above the law," says Cooper. "There was nothing stopping him. He killed and raped and maimed."
"He was the most hideous man I have ever done any research on."
Yet somehow, Cooper had to find a way to identify with this character. At one point, he resorted to taking advice from the film's director, Lee Tamahori, about how this would be possible.
"I want to bring a certain amount of myself to the characters. Most actors do," says Cooper. "You want to make a connection to a certain part in you."
This was difficult with Uday Hussein.
"I needed help identifying with someone I ultimately hated," he adds. " And I had to understand the concept of why he was the man he was."
To make matters worse. Cooper had to play two characters. Both Uday and his sympathetic body double around whom the story is told.
"And there's a lot of pressure to get it right because he affected so many people's lives so horrendously," Cooper says.
In the end, he found his Uday, and he promises a chilling film.
"It's a harrowing story," says Cooper. "But ultimately it's a gangster film set in a lawless environment."
With the cowboy hat, the shades and the massive smile, he looks like the kind of guy you'd meet in a bar. You might buy him a drink, laugh at him stumbling over his words, and think him a bit of an idiot. He might be the life and soul of the party. You'd be forgiven if it never crossed your mind that he might be the son of a tyrannical dictator.
But that's exactly who he is, for this is Uday Hussein, as brought to life by Dominic Cooper on the set of new film The Devil's Double. The film is the tale of Hussein's son and his enslaved body double, Latif Yahia (also played by Cooper) and it's a decidedly different twist on the Iraq movie we've come to expect over the last couple of years.
Set in 1980s Baghdad, it's awash with bright neons, expensive clothes and chintzy jewelry. It's a picture of the hidden excesses of the Hussein regime -- a sight few in Iraq ever witnessed - and a harsh contrast between the Husseins and their poverty-stricken populous.
For Cooper, it was Latif Yahia's story that proved so fascinating. Forced to undergo plastic surgery and put himself at risk as Uday's body double, Yahia's scars may not be as physical as many who came across the Husseins, but they're no doubt just as deep.
"It's an incredible journey about how the man had to lose his own identity, really, and change," Cooper tells RT. "For him it was life threatening. Not just for himself but also for his family, which is what, I suppose, gave him a reason to take on the role -- to become the double."
But trying to get to grips with the depths Uday Hussein plumbed has been a challenge for the actor. "It was certainly a worry for me from the very beginning to play somebody for whom I could find absolutely no moral grounding or qualities that I liked about him," says Cooper. "And that's always difficult because you've got to inhabit who they are and find something that's, not necessarily charming, but that gives you an understanding of why that person behaved in a certain way. But there's no justification for any of his actions."
The film co-stars Ludivine Sagnier and is being directed by Once Were Warriors helmer Lee Tamahori. And it is, he says, an Iraqi Scarface. "It's a real bandit movie, a real gangster movie. I've always been fascinated by the sons of dictators and despots. They usually die in a hail of blood. They're guys with an immense amount of power and an enormous amount of money. They can do anything they like and Uday was exactly that. We're telling a soft story compared to what I've heard about this guy."
The Devil's Double will be released next year.
Dominic Cooper as Uday Hussein
