The Devil's Double Trailer.

LionsGat

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.

in You Tube.

in Yahoo.

You Must read the whole article to understand it fully.

By: Latif Yahia
Click here for Full article allegations of Ed Ceasar and Eoin Butler, The two "Freelance"  journalists

I feel like Popeye.. I've taken all I can stand, I can stand no more!

Joanna Cunningham

Of course I don't have spontaneously erupting muscles and I won't be beating anyone, at least not literally, but possibly metaphorically. As I have come to acknowledge over the years the Pen is much mightier that the sword, and indeed for many years now the pen has been my weapon of choice.

 My reference to Popeye? Well, that has everything to do with the perception by some people that my silence about a certain subject and period of my personal life, is somehow a weakness or a by-product of guilt. Well it's not, my silence was actually an attempt to give my Son Charles Latif Yahia (obviously I didn't pick the Charles part and he is probably better known as Charlie Cunningham in his neighbourhood) a quiet and relatively normal life with his mother Joanna Cunningham.

Eoin Butler The "Journalist"

Sensationalist title, little substance, typical tabloid

So why is it that this subject is now appearing on my blog? Well, as the opening line says, I can take no more! The above article appeared in The Sunday World yesterday penned by Niamh O'Connor, a journalist that I don't believe that I have met with personally but who likes writing pieces about me, generally for the above mentioned piece of tat and always with the aid of Ms. Joanna Cunningham, ex- whatever and God Forgive Me, mother of my child Charlie.

The combination of the three always reads the same way, Devil's Double - Con Man- life of hell, you get the picture. Nothing new there then? Why the blog? you say. Because for these past ten years I haven't seen Charlie, he was three the last time that I saw him, he will become a teenager this November, I have missed out on so much of his life it causes me real pain, but less pain than having to deal with his mother. Generally if I were to read this blog let alone her accusations in what passes for a newspaper in Ireland, I would probably just say "Ah, sour grapes, EX- etc, etc" But has no-one ever asked why this guy,

John Cashin

Me, Latif Yahia who went up against Saddam Hussein while he was still in power, talks openly about the CIA and government corruption walked away from his son after fighting for nearly two years in the Irish Family courts, just for access? No, because everyone wants to paint Joanna as the victim, but it was I who left the courts with the five year safety order against her and what she calls a "war wound" after I supposedly gave her a "hammering"when really she was in a drug and alcohol fuelled rage. Sorry, I forgot that Joanna doesn't consider hash, pills or cocaine to be drugs, Heroin on the other hand, no that is drugs because several members of her family were addicts so she saw the devastation first hand, everything else is just recreational. It would give me great pleasure to believe that she had "turned her life around" and that her work with special needs children as she claims in The Sunday World has brought her the fulfilment that she needed, one of the last times we spoke in 2002 she was doing a course to become a journalist, maybe that's where she met Niamh O'Connor.

John Cashin and Joanna Cunningham in Spain 2003

John Cashin and Joanna Cunningham 2009

When I look back on where and how Joanna and I met it reads like a Black Comedy, Iraqi exile desperate to change his life in 1997 lands in Dublin, Ireland, after forty days and forty nights holed up in his Hotel decides to experience Dublin nightlife, is directed to a nightclub called Rumours (unbeknownst to him the running joke in the city is that if you don't have a broken bottle going in, they hand you one at the door!) and unlike every other Capital city in the world Dublin's Inner City is NOT the "IN" place to live. Dressed in Armani, their eyes met across the crowded room, he thought it was love at first sight, she smelled GRAVY. Whirlwind romance, and it all went downhill rapidly from there, Joanna came from a tight-knit community in Dublin's City Centre an area called Summerhill, what I had mistaken for an "Irish Accent" was in fact "thick Dublin" although she was well able to change according to her surroundings, but bring her within a five mile radius of the Northside and "How a' ya luv" and "Jeawsus" was never far from her lips. It truly was a case of lovely until she opened her mouth. But that was the least of her problems.

John Cashin and Joanna Cunningham With their Daughter Shawn.

A brief bio of Joanna's life as told to me by her, usually when she was drunk, runs like this, at the age of ten she was raped by one of her Mother's many boyfriends, she and her brothers and sisters were taken into care, her mother was a drinker and also used substances and at one point was imprisoned but it was never clear for what. She and the rest of her brothers and sisters were returned to her mother when she was 14 and she became involved with her mother's then Toy-boy, a guy called John Cashin, she and John ran away together and lived in a flat near Summerhill (in the 14 years that I have lived in Ireland, this area has NEVER had a good name) she became pregnant with a daughter for John, the relationship became abusive and she left him, but kept in contact as he was 'the father of her child". Or maybe it was their mutual love of dressing up (see photos) that kept them linked. All that I know is that after helping her fight John Cashin for two years in family court and spending the best part of 8,000 Irish pounds at the time, the day that she finally won full custody of her daughter, was the same day that I arrived home to find them both in my bed. That's the kind of woman she is.

When Joanna drank she was liable to do anything, one evening when we were on speaking terms and she had let me take Charlie out for the day, I returned with him, she had been drinking and decided to tell me a funny story; On a night out with friends she took a taxi home, on finding that she had no money , she told me " I couldn't pay cash, so I gave him a Blow-job instead, ha!' there was no shame, no embarrassment. It was this willingness to operate "payment in kind" that started her relationship with Sergeant Smith of Coolock Garda Station, we had bought a house in the area because she wanted to be close to her mother and again I had no idea about the area until it was too late. Sergeant Smith was Joanna's trump card, if I caught her smoking hash in the house, he was called, if she was drunk and wanted a fight he was called. Even after she had me barred from the house without my knowledge, he would accompany her to the family court to stop me seeing Charlie. Always the two things she used against me were, my book " I was Saddam's Son" and "He's going to run away with my child to Iraq!" I found the family courts in Ireland to be particularly Xenophobic in the early 2000's. When Sergeant smith couldn't go with her John Cashin would oblige.

Latif Yahia in Dublin 11th of April 2001

She also claimed to be a member of the IRA and at one point sent two men to me giving me "Two days to leave the country".

On the 11th of April 2001 I came downstairs because I heard Charlie crying, as I descended the stairs into the haze of hash smoke I asked Joanna what the hell she was doing? She knew that Charlie was asthmatic and that I had no time for drugs of any kind, at this point she had ploughed through 6 large cans of Budweiser and a bottle of wine, in the article she says she hit me with a mug, it was a pint glass. To this day and three surgeries later, I still pull bits of glass out of my face, a lifetime reminder. In the past ten years since the pint glass, I have tried and failed repeatedly for her to be charged with assault, anyone that has experience with the system here in Ireland knows that you have to get a Garda to take a statement before a charge can be brought. No Garda would take a statement from me in Coolock Station, when I finally did find one, he was transferred and the statement went with him. I filed a complaint to the Garda Ombudsman, the finding, my complaint was "vexatious".

In Ireland as opposed to many other European countries the Police (Gardai) are trained for six months at the Police Academy and are then sent out to "learn on the job",e.g. slap on the handcuffs ask questions later.

I was very pleased to hear that Ireland had it's first "mixed race" recruit a few years ago, but Ireland's police force still doesn't have enough "colour" for my liking.

Knowing Joanna's background I find it deeply disturbing that she should say that I threatened to rape her daughter, having suffered through that ordeal herself as a young girl. Anyone who knows me, knows how much I love children and would never hurt them, they are the only innocence and purity left in this world and to hurt a child is the greatest evil possible. Also, Uday had threatened to rape my sisters if I did not comply to be his Fidai, why would I use the same threat? I hated him and everything about him.

She also says that I have made the past 12 years of her life hell, well, I haven't seen her in the best part of ten, I really don't want to either and the last time we spoke was when she drunk called me telling me "Any man would be proud to have Charlie as his son, but what can I do, I told him you were DEAD, Bastard!"

It was one of her milder calls. I had two hundred and fifty missed calls one day and was constantly receiving fast food deliveries that I never ordered.

I understand why The Sunday World and The Sunday Times have interviewed her, she certainly makes sensational accusations and of course the accusations being her words not theirs saves them from lawsuits like the one that I filed and won against The Sunday World in 2006.

The Victory headline, Tony O'Reilly the owner of Independent News Media who owns the Sunday World among other titles, puts the right envelope in the right hands as usual.

Again Joanna was in the background of that story also. Yes, I lost on appeal, after Michael Mc Dowell the then Minister for Justice in Ireland had changed laws pertinent to my case, I was provided with a Criminal Judge to try my case not a Libel Judge as in the case that I had won and instead of the case being an appeal the Criminal Judge decided to try it as a new case, using surprise, surprise, the new laws. All in a court in the middle of nowhere with only one journalist allowed, guess which paper she wrote for? One in four of Ireland's Judges are corrupt, in fact the whole judicial system is incestuous, you can't get in unless you have family or friends in the right places and most of the cases are won and lost on the golf course.

As for Joanna's assertion that I only wanted a passport, if that were the case I would have taken the one they offered me in 2002, but I didn't ever want her to say the I got it through her, so I rejected it and now I don't want to be Irish, the Irish government are cowards, they can't face any problem head on and it doesn't matter which party they belong to they all operate the same way, without true love for the country or the people of Ireland.

Joanna Cunningham, Click the Link ►► Makeover Your Mum Finalists!!

Let me say this very clearly, after four years of waiting on an answer for my third Citizenship application the Irish government can SHOVE IT UP THEIR ARSE!

John Cashin and Joanna Cunningham in my Home 2001, Joanna tried to tell the court that these photos were taken before my relationship with her, further photographs proved to the Judge that these were taken while my son was present in the house. the Judge the called her a liar.

Joanna Cunningham

Everything is related, a few weeks ago I applied for my Freedom of Information Act from the Department of inJustice in Ireland, well, it must have scared someone because since then the smear campaign has started and Joanna has been wheeled in to discredit me. A few years ago an unknown Irish journalist wrote an article about me in a subscription magazine, he now works for the Irish Times and interviewed Joanna for his own blog, he then passed her information to Ed Caesar of The Sunday Times who added to her paid story by interviewing Uday's pimps whom also got paid for their participation, a story which has been paraphrased in Niamh O'Connors piece in The Sunday World. Their goal? Screw Latif Yahia, Sell newspapers and make a name for yourself. But as Oscar Wilde once famously said "There is only one thing worse than being talked about, not being talked about."

John Cashin

Whatever the future holds, I am sure that I have not heard the last from Joanna but then she has not really heard the last from me either, for a few years now I have held off the publication of my book about Ireland and of course my relationship with her, I had hoped that I would be able to end it on a happy note. I now see that as an impossibility, "Forty shades of Conspiracy" will be available at Christmas, don't expect to find it in Irish Bookstores.

Joanna Cunningham

John Cashin

As for my son Charlie, well, I love him dearly, I always have and remember him everyday. We talk about him from the days when he could be with us and look forward to the day when we can see him again. I made the decision in 2003 to stop fighting for him and to wait the long wait for the day when he is ready to find me. When he does, I have plenty of photos and videos for him to watch. He can then decide for himself what kind of Father I was.

Joanna Cunningham

I would at this point like to thank my wife Karen for her patience and dedication throughout the past ten years, she witnessed not all but a lot of Joanna's behaviour and was a rock of sense and comfort. I am also so grateful to have two wonderful children, they are a great source of joy to me. For all the bad that I have seen in my life I am now in the happiest place that I have ever been.

The following photographs are a small illustration of the environment that I know my son was raised in, I can only hope that he has not been left psychologically scarred. My apologies if anyone finds this material offensive, my intent is to shine light on my accuser and to silence any further attacks on me. It was not my intent to go public as such, but I cannot sit idly by as people lie about me.

John Cashin

Unfortunately the Irish family courts in 2000/2002 favoured the Mother in every situation.

To all those Fathers that have been separated from their children, don't lose hope, not every Father is bad and not every Mother is good. There must be some justice in the world.

A word to any other publication that may have been interested in interviewing Ms. Cunningham, if this is the only level of person that you can find to interview to try and discredit me, then please go ahead because for every lie she tells about me I have three pieces of truth about her.

“The Devil’s Double”

“The Devil’s Double”

IR RAW Interview: Dominic Cooper & Director Lee Tamahori Of “The Devil’s Double” [Sundance Film Festival 2011] – Part I

IR RAW Interview: Dominic Cooper, Ludivine Sagnier & Director Lee Tamahori Of “The Devil’s Double” [Sundance Film Festival 2011] – Part II

Abu Ghraib Prison

This site is to show the Horrific footage of American techniques at Abu Ghraib prison.
To throw light on the hypocrisy that is the West, "we shall not torture! - on our own soil" Under the veil of Liberation America went into Iraq to save the Iraqi people, instead they tortured, killed, maimed and defiled. But even through the occupation they did not "install" Democracy, but a weak and feeble government, an excuse for an Iraqi Parliament controlled on one side by Iran and the other by America. Iraq will never again be free or Liberated.

Abu Ghraib Prison Part 1

Abu Ghraib Prison Part 2

Abu Ghraib Prison Part 3

Abu Ghraib Prison Part 4

Abu Ghraib Prison Part 5

Abu Ghraib Prison Part 6

Abu Ghraib Prison Part 7

Abu Ghraib Prison Part 8

Collateral Murder

Overview

Update: On July 6, 2010, Private Bradley Manning, a 22 year old intelligence analyst with the United States Army in Baghdad, was charged with disclosing this video (after allegedly speaking to an unfaithful journalist). The whistleblower behind the Pentagon Papers, Daniel Ellsberg, has called Mr. Manning a 'hero'. He is currently imprisoned in Kuwait. The Apache crew and those behind the cover up depicted in the video have yet to be charged. To assist Private Manning, please see bradleymanning.org.

5th April 2010 10:44 EST WikiLeaks has released a classified US military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad -- including two Reuters news staff.

Reuters has been trying to obtain the video through the Freedom of Information Act, without success since the time of the attack. The video, shot from an Apache helicopter gun-sight, clearly shows the unprovoked slaying of a wounded Reuters employee and his rescuers. Two young children involved in the rescue were also seriously wounded.

The military did not reveal how the Reuters staff were killed, and stated that they did not know how the children were injured.

After demands by Reuters, the incident was investigated and the U.S. military concluded that the actions of the soldiers were in accordance with the law of armed conflict and its own "Rules of Engagement".

Consequently, WikiLeaks has released the classified Rules of Engagement for 2006, 2007 and 2008, revealing these rules before, during, and after the killings.

WikiLeaks has released both the original 38 minutes video and a shorter version with an initial analysis. Subtitles have been added to both versions from the radio transmissions.

WikiLeaks obtained this video as well as supporting documents from a number of military whistleblowers. WikiLeaks goes to great lengths to verify the authenticity of the information it receives. We have analyzed the information about this incident from a variety of source material. We have spoken to witnesses and journalists directly involved in the incident.

WikiLeaks wants to ensure that all the leaked information it receives gets the attention it deserves. In this particular case, some of the people killed were journalists that were simply doing their jobs: putting their lives at risk in order to report on war. Iraq is a very dangerous place for journalists: from 2003- 2009, 139 journalists were killed while doing their work.

St. Patrick's Day in Ierland 2011

Happy St. Patrick's day to all my Irish friends around the world!

A New Era.

By : Latif Yahia

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…..
I had better stop there or I’ll be charged with plagiarism, but, it is definitely an interesting time, especially for the Middle East. The spark that ignited that whole region of the world and gave hope to the idea of democracy or at least regime-leader change, has fully taken hold and now and there is no turning back.
As I watched the events unfold on television, I was struck by a mixture of elation at the fact that after forty or more years of rule, the people had had enough of their masters and were –for the most part- protesting peacefully for their removal and a sadness that this “liberation” was not the kind that Iraq had been able to achieve for itself.
Having said that Iraq had played it’s part in recent events, Iraq was held up to the rest of the Arab world as a ‘cautionary tale’ and example of ‘how Not to do it’ and when outside help was offered, the nations replied ‘No thanks, we’ll do this ourselves’ a lesson hard learned by Iraqis.
I send out my greatest respect to Tunisia and Egypt, who have made effective change without the loss of too many citizens and I send my deepest sympathies and respect to the families of those that did lose their lives in the protests.
I know that Tunisia and Egypt especially are open minded and progressive countries and will be strong enough to continue on their path to democracy, I can only hope that the other countries that are following in their footsteps –like Libya- will not succumb to extreme Islamists, something that is quite possible. Maybe that is why the drums are beating for Ghadaffi in a way that they didn’t for Ben Ali or Mubarak, add to that the fact that Libya holds nearly 5% of the world’s petrol and you have a recipe for America to go in there and secure it’s position. Unilateral sanctions only punish the people, not the regime. The regime have enough money outside the country to still be able to do and buy what they want, it is only the man on the street that feels the lack. It is estimated that Ghadaffi has 20 billion in London alone. While I am writing this, his money - 40 Billion in America and god knows how much in Switzerland- is being frozen.
Which leads me neatly on to my next point, an International court needs to be set up not just to hold Dictators, Tyrants and Despots to account, but those who supported the regime and I’ll explain this point clearly, a regime cannot function if it does not have suppliers, weapons, banking, business. A petrol filled country with a tyrannical leader cannot make money from it’s petrol if there is no-one who is willing to do business with them, they cannot keep control of their population if they cannot buy arms and their money is of no use if they cannot keep it somewhere safe outside their own country.
So often we are shown people like Saddam, held up high for us to despise and point at, but could or would he have survived so long if he didn’t have ‘friends’, let’s be clear here, business is the agenda of the day. Big business. It’s too easy to point the finger and say ‘Dictator, Despot, Tyrant’ but then under the table sell them billions of dollars worth of weapons so you can buy the oil cheap, the people who suffer are the citizens of that country.
But let’s also take a look at how these people get power, it could be argued that they took it by force, yes, but how did they get that “force”? somebody had to support and supply them.
I was a participant in a peace mission five years ago, and one of the other participants was a retired Colonel from the US Army, during this mission he tried to explain simply what the policy of the US was with regard to Non-US leaders, his explanation went something like this:
A country has a leader who is a bad guy, the US doesn’t like this Bad guy so we decide that he needs to go. He has an enemy who is not a really good guy, so we support the not good guy against the bad guy to get him out. But then after the not so good guy gets power he turns out to be a really bad guy.
Does that make sense?
My case in point is Noori Al Maliki, you only have to look at Iraq, the corruption (yet another Minister ran form Iraq yesterday with the best part of 100 million dollars), lack of any sign of progression since the installation of Democracy, the damning fact that 80 people have died in Iraq while protesting for change of the governing system, not the government. The fact also that none of this is getting any coverage in the Western media, why? Because, America doesn’t want to look like it has failed. But it has, America made so much noise about not letting Iran get it’s hands on Iraq but then handed the leadership over to people that it Knew were supported by Iran, Noor Al Maliki stood up a few days ago and said that nowhere in the world had democracy like Iraq, Iraq had the best democracy in the world, well if you call handing Ministries and positions of power over to people who haven’t been elected by the people Democratically, then I don’t know what the Yemenis, Bahrainis, Saudis or Libyans are demonstrating against, they already have democracy!
The leaders in the Middle East are in a state of panic, most of these leaders be they Presidents, Kings or dictators acquired their power with the help of Britain or America 40 or more years ago, the King of Saudi for instance has made an offer of 150 Billion dollars to buy Facebook! Why? Because he knows that through social networking the people are exacting change, they can mobilize and exchange ideas faster than the country’s intelligence service can track them. If he was a good leader why should he worry? If his people were happy why would they need to protest against him? As with most countries in the Middle East the power is held by the few, it is designed that way.

I wish all those who want change the best and send them my heartfelt support, I hope that those who succeed always keep in mind what it was to be downtrodden and instill in their children and the generations to come a sense of responsibility for their democracies. When we are complacent, tyranny has the opportunity to reign, when we say ‘ what can I do? I am only one’ we forget that that we are many and it is our voices that should be heard. When we say ‘ Uh, I‘m not going to vote, they’re all the same anyway’ then we let down not only ourselves and our country but the ones that had to fight and die for us to have these rights.
Never take your right to be heard for granted, you have heard the phrase ‘Use it or lose it’ and it is far easier to lose it than it was to get it in the first place.

Before the Invasion of Kuwait in 1990, even though we had had an eight year war with Iran, Iraq had everything. No-one had felt the effects of war so much, yes, we knew that it was happening and we saw the young soldiers return from the front but life had always continued as normal, everything you wanted and needed was there for you, including Night Clubs, Bars and Restaurants.

Saddam may have been considered a dictator and despot, but he made sure that the people of iraq were provided for, he kept crime at a minimum, the streets were clean and the system worked.
Since the 'Liberation' of Iraq by America in 2003, this has changed completely, those who were once our enemies and the sworn enemies of America according to Mr. Bush's 'Axis of Evil' are now the masters of Iraq. Iran is now in control of Iraq, we have been invaded by Mullahs, only the ones in Iraq come wearing suits.
The effect is the same though, before 2003 two million people a year would visit Mecca, now in Iraq we have 18 million pilgrims to Iraq, whose only desire is to slap themselves and cry for Hussein (cousin of the Prophet Mohammed PBUH) in an effort to absolve themselves of the sins of their forefathers, the murder of Hussein and his family in Karbala.
Iraq was built on blood, throughout it's history it has been won and lost, blood feeding it's soil. Maybe it is for this reason that only someone with a strong fist can truly control it.

Iraq Before The 1990 War Part 1

Iraq Before The 1990 War Part 2

Sundance Film Festival
by Jen Yamato || 01 28 2011 4:30 PM

The Devil’s Double: The Outrageous, Over the Top Iraqi Scarface You’ve Been Waiting For

Tired 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.

Lionsgate takes North America on Sundance hit Devil's Double

27 January, 2011 | By Jeremy Kay

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.

Sundance 2011: Exclusive Interview With 'The Devil's Double' Star Dominic Cooper

By Matt Patches , Special to Hollywood.com
Tuesday, January 25, 2011

In 2010, Dominic Cooper made a big splash opposite Carey Mulligan in the Oscar-nominated An Education. The role showed off his suave, dapper side, but in his latest film, the Sundance debut The Devil's Double, Cooper really sinks his teeth into a role (or in this case, roles) and pushes himself to the extreme.

The Devil's Double tells the story of Latif Yahia, an Iraqi military officer recruited to become the fiday, or body double, of Saddam Hussein’s tyrannical son Uday. Cooper plays two distinct roles in the film: the conflicted Latif, who struggles to take on his new job, and the murderous party animal Uday. The film is insane, to put it lightly, and the crazed tone is in part to Cooper's disappearance into the two men's stranger-than-fiction world.

The Devil's Double is a wild ride and a real departure from previous work? How did you get involved with the film?

I read it, with the understanding that someone else had the part that it might fall through. I read it knowing that it had been around for many, many years, many directors had been attached, It was a script that stuck in my head. I was fascinated by how little I knew of something that affected so much of my life and the world, and ultimately, it was this mad gangster movie and the opportunity for an actor to play both those roles.

I was unsure about the person I heard doing the part at the time, it didn’t make sense to me. I managed to get into a room with Lee [Tamahori, director] and I auditioned for hours with him. I brought into the room something I thought this person was and who the other person was, and next thing I knew...I was doing it. It was the most exciting moment in the work I’ve done so far.

Were there resources to help you better understand how this world operated? To give insight into living out both Latif and Uday's lives?

No, there was nothing to like that. The difficulty for me was to understand and have compassion for this person, which I think you have to do when you’re playing someone. When you’re inhabiting someone, looking through their eyes and understanding their complexities.

With this guy, I couldn’t. I couldn’t understand him - he was a madman, a berserk man that needed help. Everything he did was disgusting and atrocious. It wasn’t necessarily about him, they became more fictional characters. I think that was important for me and Lee both to kind and reach a point and use this as an incredible story but we don’t know what they said we don’t know the relationship they had. We’re making a film. And this is not meant to be stooped in the real truth. Lee said the only truth in this film is that the US got him. That's the one fact that we know of this story.

That's evident in the film. You're constantly wondering what's real because the tone jumps from gritty realism to over-the-top, often comedic levels. Uday is executing these insane operations and one minute you're laughing, the next, you're horrified. How did you balance the tones of the film?

That’s why you need to be in the hands of a genius like Lee, with this kind of material. An actor doesn’t know that. That’s why I have to rely on him for the tone and sensibility of the piece. I don’t know what he’s going for. I can kind of get a vague understanding. I didn’t know he was making a outrageous, horrific gangster film. What I knew is that he made the most stunning debut film with Once Were Warriors, and I knew that, if any one can handle that kind of material and those people, and can understand how those gangsters type tribal people. then he is the person to do it. And my job is to come up with something that fitted with that environment. And although sometimes humorous because you're so baffled and amazed that this human exists.

Were there moments where you wanted to pull back but Lee pushed you to go further?

I think it was a matter of bringing it down. He kept me very still, that was very helpful. It was his actual energy on set that was so inspiring. It was a short shoot, relatively cheap, and we had a lot to do. Technically it was difficult because of the doubling up of the scenes.

What was the process of shooting two roles in one scene? Were you constantly repeating the setups and blocking?

Yes, and that was why you only really got three takes on anything. Some people like to go on and do take after take, I couldn’t do that. There wasn’t time. It wasn’t stressful, I loved it. And you watched him and he had to create a new environment. It would be like...Lee wasn’t allowed to use this position or camera angle. And he was completely reconfiguring his ideas and I always think that creates the most creative inspired work and its constantly moving. Watching him with the amount of decisions he had to make, [laughs] I kind of felt my job is kind of easy.

What challenges did you face embodying two separate roles, bouncing between characters on a whim?

I needed to make one who is watching it believe it is two different people no matter how much reconstructive surgery one of them had had and how much they needed to look the same which they did, it was difficult to decide who was who. I needed them to be clearly two different people, I got help from my wonderful dialect coach, I got help with the make-up lady. It was about making a vocal difference and physical difference and the way in which the two characters thought differently.

Into the film, you slowly realize there's a third character you're playing. Was that intentional?

Oh, definitely. The one that Latif had to transform into. I wanted here to be an intricate difference in the way he went to perform as Uday. I wanted him to be slightly different still. Not quite succeeding whole heartily in becoming him - there was still something holding him back. That’s why when you see him practicing in the mirror there’s still this tentativeness about him. He was not a showman, not an actor. There was no reason he should have been able to manipulate who he is. He did it to the best of his ability and I needed that to be clear.

What's next for you? Anything in the can?

My Week With Marilyn with Kenneth Branagh. And Captain America.

That must have been a bit bigger than what you were accustom to.

It was massive - and intriguing.

You play Howard Stark in the film, a character with a wealth of comic mythology. What does your role in the actual film entail?

He moves the story along. He transforms him into Captain America. He’s Iron Man’s dad! He was a playboy, it was fun. How much he winds up in the film, who knows. But I hope he has an affect on it.

Sundance Review: "The Devil's Double" Delivers the Horror of Uday Hussein

By Sharon Waxman

How much do we want to know about the world that ended with the hated war in Iraq?

Uday Saddam Hussein, older son of the Iraqi dictator, was so grotesque a character that when fictionalized in “The Devil’s Double,” the viewer is tempted to imagine that liberties were taken.

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.

SUNDANCE REVIEW: 'The Devil's Double' Is a Vivid Look at the Body Double for Saddam Hussein's Satanic Son

11:37 PM 1/23/2011
by Todd McCarthy

The Bottom Line

Excellent lead performance tops a vivid but one-dimensional look at the double for Saddam's satanic son.

PARK CITY -- An urgent desire to take a long shower is an appropriate response to watching "The Devil’s Double," so unsavory is the experience of being immersed in the world of Saddam Hussein’s Caligula-like son Uday and his double, Latif Yahia.

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