It’s 1987 in Baghdad, and the son of Saddam Hussein lives in a world of fast cars, designer clothes and beautiful women. Considered to be among the most hated men in all of Iraq, Uday Hussein’s inherited reign of terror would last for the better part of his father’s regime.
Latif Yahia is a lieutenant in the Iraqi army whose unfortunate fate is sealed when Uday asks him to be his “fiday,” or body double. Because of their uncanny resemblance (both characters are portrayed by British actor Dominic Cooper, who recently was seen as Howard Stark in Captain America) Latif has no choice but to submit to Uday’s every whim, or see his family killed.
Latif has to decide if it is right to “extinguish himself” and play the part of a corrupt and seemingly psychotic man with the power to have Latif’s family tortured if he refuses. Seeing Uday’s hedonistic lifestyle full of drug use and orgies and violence, Latif is left questioning his own morals and the job that he is about to sacrifice his identity for. The audience looks through the eyes of Latif, experiencing firsthand Uday’s atrocities, like torture and rape of innocent Iraqi citizens.
Cooper utilizes flat characterizations as Uday Hussein, the chauvinistic maniac who boozes in his underwear, snorts lines of coke off of imported marble coffee tables and always sports a pair of Ray Bans – which was an explicit amount of product placement from Ray Ban.
Despite the crude caricature of the infamous Uday Hussein, the audience is still left gasping and up in their seats every time Uday smiles, gun clenched and eyes bulged glaring at what could be his next victim.
Uday’s more frightening side comes out underneath his buck-toothed smile when he makes the narcissistic declaration to Latif, “I will never let you go; I love you too much.” All of the decadence that Uday is seen sporting, from Cartier, Rolex, and Ray Ban to cars like the Ferrari 308 GTB and Mondial strongly impacts the viewer as it is set against the backdrop of war-torn Iraq and Kuwait.
Director Lee Tamahori (“Die Another Day,” “XXX: State of the Union”) did a fantastic job with the script, which was written by Michael Thomas based on the true story of Latif Yahia.
Tamahori utilizes rich desert imagery to highlight the clash between a dictator’s power and a country ravaged by war and malcontent with a government that shows little consistency in too many ways. However, the plot seems to manifest itself too quickly in the beginning, leaving little room for any sort of real or hard-hitting resolution.
For most of the film, the relationship between the two men is seen as tenuous, with what seemed to have been deep introspection — as dishonest as it truly was — that leads to an eventual rebellion by Latif, who runs away from Uday in a pseudo-climax that leaves a lot to be desired.
It’d be easy to expect a great psychological thrill between a psychotic womanizer and the man who has to pretend to be him. However, there is only a flat-noted falling out between the two men, and even a lazily inserted romance that turns into the classic running away together into the sunset (literally).
The stilted romantic fling allowed no room for intrigue when from the get-go, betraying glances were shared between Latif and Uday’s romantic interest. Clearly there was a status quo for love scenes (and one that required little imagination) and clichés like “You are never tender to me, you never look at me, you never say you love me …” With lines that were meant to make the audience think and look at these so-called conflicted characters, Tamahori and Cooper managed to do little.
The film is full of gruesome and vile acts of violence in many forms, and sometimes it seems inappropriate when seen through Tamahori’s glossy visuals and glorified action violence.
If action films with pretty cars and pretty women sound appealing and the recent Middle Eastern conflict is of particular interest, this film is worth viewing. Otherwise, this film is not recommended for casual dates or the timid movie-goer. Lionsgate has produced better, and it’s likely that this film is going to stay at select theatres where it belongs.
