Perhaps the best indicator of this film's quality is that it remains politically neutral throughout. How easy would it be to make a movie that wades into such landmined material and clumsily preaches. It's commendable that this movie stuck with our central character and his struggle to reclaim his own identity.

The performance of Cooper appears woefully unappreciated, which is a great shame. He's fantastic and draws a distinct contrast between Uday and Latif. Uday's puerile brutality is disgusting and compelling to watch at the same time.

There are a couple of unbelievably comical moments of CGI that I wish were left out but it cannot detract from quality filmmaking.

This one appears to have flown under a lot of radars, so I urge you to chase it up.

Hey Andrew,

Good call starting a thread for this one.
Cooper put up one of the more engaging performances this year.
I just wish the rest of the film was up to his work.
I felt the film came in a tad long, but still worth checking out, for sure.

I first saw Cooper in the Carey Mulligan picture, "An Education".
He's got a striking mug and good nose for picking film projects.

Not too thrilled about him doing the Abraham Lincoln vampire thing.
Hopefully, Hollywood doesn't gobble this guy up.

E.D.

I'm going to have to disagree about this one. I thought it was fair at best. It was entertaining, I suppose, but for a film about Uday Hussein, it was just silly. The guy was one of the greatest fiends of modern day, if not of all time, and with that in mind, the film utterly failed to live up to its potential.

There were things I liked about the film so I'll start with them.

Dominic Cooper's performance was quite good. No easy feet to play two people. Further more, there were also subtle differences between Cooper as Uday and Cooper as Latif as Uday. I appreciated that his impersonations weren't just a carbon copy of the other character he was playing. So in a way, it was like he was playing three characters.

Jeremy Irons would be proud.

I liked the club scenes. Uday is his element was just so fun and over the top and his cheesy music choices made him even more so. He just came off as such a corny guy but who had the means and the desire to live in maximum excess. The "take off your clothes" scene was Caligula-esque. Loved it.

The scene where Uday captures Latif's father and has the two speak on the phone together was amazing. Most real scene in the film.

I was pretty pumped when Latif first gets captured and "offered" the double position. I just felt like a situation where the word "no" was meaningless. Uday came off as such a powerful force that Latif rejecting the position was like him trying to defy gravity.

Unfortunately, this didn't feel like the case for the rest of the film. Despite all the warnings from Saddam's associates, Uday let Latif get away with everything. He also became more and more cartoonish as the film went on and by the end, he seemed to barely pose a threat at all.

Imagine that. A nonthreatening Uday Hussein.

Not to mention for a film called The Devil's Double, it was clearly about Uday. Latif barely had any lines during the first half of the film. The film totally expected Uday's character to carry it so once he becomes this big kid, the suspense is just sucked out of the film entirely.

The violence was actually pretty brutal and shocking and starting the film, I never expected it. But as the film gets goofier and goofier and more and more aimless, it just starts to feel like cheap exploitation.

And Saddam... I love how they portrayed him as a mere disapproving father figure and not the brutal dictator that he was. Seriously. WTF.

The film just utterly failed to fill me with the sense of dread that the real life people most certainly would have. A squandered opportunity, I felt.