Review of "The Devil's Double."
Jul. 2nd, 2014 11:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_fantastic_ms_foxI was really looking forward to this movie. Uday Hussein was a pretty interesting monster in real life. What would a historical piece about him look like? Would his behaviour goes to prove that, as David Brin would put it, "unchecked monarchies" are actually the same thing as "hereditary dictatorships?" Would we get an inkling of our own NATO complicity in this?
Nope.
35 minutes in, with my bullshit detector about to crack from overuse, I stopped the movie and started googling it. Yup, it's the fabrications of a career liar interpreted into an exploitation film by a mediocre director, starring a British actor who is... trying out clowning instead of actually acting as he tries to look extra Arab in front of a greenscreen. I don't know why so many reviews said "at least Dominic Cooper was good." Switching between two shallow characters is not difficult. Any decent actor can do it, with the possible exception of Eliza Dushku when she was miscast in the lead of Dollhouse, which she also Executive Produced... and thus had a hand in casting. (Speaking of what power does to your judgment...)
At least I know what to do in my next short. Play two characters. Use a greenscreen. Don't make it a comedy. Win an Oscar.
And to think, someone could have made such a good movie here.
Well, I guess "House of Saddam" covered part of it. Although it also kind of glosses over how the American/British bloc put the people in power that the Americans and British later went to war to depose.
Nope.
35 minutes in, with my bullshit detector about to crack from overuse, I stopped the movie and started googling it. Yup, it's the fabrications of a career liar interpreted into an exploitation film by a mediocre director, starring a British actor who is... trying out clowning instead of actually acting as he tries to look extra Arab in front of a greenscreen. I don't know why so many reviews said "at least Dominic Cooper was good." Switching between two shallow characters is not difficult. Any decent actor can do it, with the possible exception of Eliza Dushku when she was miscast in the lead of Dollhouse, which she also Executive Produced... and thus had a hand in casting. (Speaking of what power does to your judgment...)
At least I know what to do in my next short. Play two characters. Use a greenscreen. Don't make it a comedy. Win an Oscar.
And to think, someone could have made such a good movie here.
Well, I guess "House of Saddam" covered part of it. Although it also kind of glosses over how the American/British bloc put the people in power that the Americans and British later went to war to depose.