Devil's Double

“You are asking me to extinguish myself.”

This is the observation—or reprimand, it’s a bit unclear which—that Latif Yahia makes to Uday Hussein at the outset of The Devil’s Double. As a defense of self-sovereignty, the statement primes the audience for a promising allegorical foray into the duality of man to follow.

The only problem is that it never materializes.

The Devil’s Double, which follows Latif’s coerced transformation from officer in the Iraqi army to body double for the psychotic son of Saddam, is full of little let-downs like this, moments that stimulate the psyche before ultimately going nowhere: Latif standing before a mirror, seeing his likeness reflected back at him, before he turns to face the identical Uday, seeing himself again in the face of his captor; Latif approaching two husky, dark-haired men as they shuffle about a tennis court, visibly disturbed to see that they bear an identical resemblance to one another, as well as to Saddam Hussein; Uday’s lover—the main one, at least—distinguishing between Uday and Latif solely on the basis of their dangling anatomies (Latif’s, evidently, is bigger).

Unfortunately, stunning as they are, these parlor tricks never reach below the surface in The Devil’s Double. The fact that any two characters—most centrally, Latif and Uday—look the same ends up telling us quite little about them, and quite little about identity in general. It’s frustrating: long shots dwelling on aesthetic similarities are employed so extensively that it feels like they should go somewhere. In fact, the film’s focus on body doubles becomes an unintentional red herring that breaks an implicit promise to the viewer--it’s a visual crutch, nothing more, and never approaches its hinted-at significance. “Don’t overthink this one, too,” you begin to say. “It’s probably only another couple of guys who just look the same.”

Because although Uday and Latif, both played by Dominic Cooper, are identical, and although they consistently struggle with each other throughout the film—exchanging words and gunfire every other scene—we never see them struggle with themselves. The spectacular outward dualities of the characters are not reproduced, despite the expectations that they invite, within the characters themselves. So although Latif, to put it in his own words, is consistently in danger of being extinguished by other people, he is never really faced with the crisis of extinguishing himself.

It’s a shame, too. Director Lee Tamahori had a great premise for a film about identity: an honorable family man is forced to serve as body double for a megalomaniacal son of a dictator, played by the same actor. It’s too bad they left it at that.