As outlandish and misbegotten as Sad dam Hussein’s interior-decorating taste, “The Devil’s Double” purports to be the story of a man who posed as Uday Hussein’s doppelganger. Really it’s just a trashy bid to be the “Scarface” of Mesopotamia.
An alternately giggly and outraged Dominic Cooper plays both Saddam’s childish psycho son and an ordinary soldier pulled out of the ranks because of his resemblance to Uday. Latif the stand-in is given plastic surgery to make him a ringer for the dictator’s power-mad boy. He punches his boss, steals Uday’s slutty girlfriend (Ludivine Sagnier), beds her while bombs are falling on Baghdad (was it shockingly awesome for you, dear?), peels away in Uday’s flashy car and even gets in a gunfight with the temperamental princeling.
We can safely assume that pretty much none of this happened in reality; people living in fear of torture in a police state don’t tend to deliver Steven Seagal dialogue like “Go to hell.”
The movie slavishly reimagines every snort of cocaine, disco binge and disembowelment carried out by Uday. And by the time it gets to a scene where he orders all the girls at a party to get naked, it becomes clear that director Lee Tamahori isn’t interested in the horrific reign of Saddam, but in spicing up late nights on pay TV. May his wish be quickly granted.