The Devil's Double

It's well known that Saddam Hussein had body doubles, who he maintained to send in his stead into dangerous situations. At some stage, it is claimed, his son, Uday decided that he would also like to have one, and so recruited Latif Yahia, someone he knew from school who was said to look just like him, as his own. Latif didn't want to do this, for all sorts of reasons, but was forced to, under threat of violence towards himself and his family. Being kept close to Uday in this way, he had a ringside seat for Uday's crimes.

In this film based on these events, both Latif and Uday are played by Dominic Cooper, and it's Cooper's performance that you really want to see the film for. In that Latif is a serious, fair minded man, and Uday is a twitchy, out of control psychopath, with enough personal power to do as he likes. And while not only is this a dual role, but also a role in which one of the roles is of a man impersonating the other man, you are left in no doubt at any time which you're looking at. It's a pretty masterly physical performance.

There are a couple of serious flaws, though. First, it doesn't really ring true. There's a romantic subplot, which doesn't feel right. The portrayal of Uday as an inadequate man, jealous of the upstanding man he's forcing to be his pet is a compelling one, but feels like it might well have been added on. And if you're of a suspicious mind as I am, a quick Wiki seems to suggest that some of the events allegedly witnessed by Latif actually occurred before Latif was recruited. Overall, I just didn't get a ring of truth from the film. Serious questions have been raised as to whether any of it is true, or whether Latif Yahia is just a fantasist.

The reason for cinematic embellishment might well be the second flaw: Uday is of little significance. Now, I would be the last person to suggest that for instance Hitler was anything other than among the worst humans to ever live. But his actions had undeniable historical significance, and resonate today. Hence, a film like Downfall has a purpose. Uday, however, was nothing more than a raping murderer, and remembering his existence serves little purpose other than to remind us the dangers of allowing anyone too much power. The film, then, is just a plotless sequence of grisly acts on his part, with Latif standing mute witness - mute, I suspect, because I couldn't personally think of a thing I'd want to say to Uday other than "Die, you utter arsehole."

So, yes, this is a film that's long on performance, but pretty short on plot, because it's effectively the biopic of a man whose life served no purpose whatsoever, told from the perspective of a man who may well have never really met him.

The Big Picture

A French film whose original title was "L'homme qui voulait vivre sa vie" or "The man who wanted to live his life", which while a bit clunking in English, is a better and less trite title than the one they've come up with.

So... Paul Exben is by any reasonable standard, apparently a very successful man. He's a successful lawyer, has a beautiful wife, lovely kids, lovely house, everything is just about perfect. However, not all is as it seems. He's a lawyer because he was pressured into giving up his dreams of being what he wants to be really, a photographer. And he's supposedly a great photographer, but traded all that in for the big money, and fills his house with all the fancy photographic kit money can buy to compensate. His wife (in what seems to be an unreasonable double standard) seems to resent him for a) having gone out to be a bread winner so she can concentrate on her writing, where she feels like a trapped failure and wants to give up on her artistic ambitions, and b) having given up on his own artistic ambitions. So much so that she's conducting an affair with a guy who's basically what Paul would have been if he hadn't sold out, a struggling photographer.

The domestic drama comes to a sudden end, when there's a bit of a calamity. Without saying what, Paul is suddenly in a position where he looks guilty of a very serious crime, and decides he has to cover his tracks and disappear completely. Which he does, disappearing off to somewhere in the former Yugoslavia (Montenegro, I think, but details are sketchy), where he begins a new life with a new identity, and begins to live the life he always wanted really, as a professional photographer, a life which comes to have meteoric success, which threatens to put him under the light of publicity, and expose his identity.

It's a great film. Romain Duris puts in a great performance as Paul, whose calm, self assured exterior gradually unravels as the film goes on; there's never a visible jarring change of character, yet by the end, Paul is quite a different man than he was at the start. The film's beautifully shot, lots of lovely vistas of the Adriatic coastline, which links well with the films theme of artistic photography (though at one point, I did find myself thinking that the cinematographer was clearly much better at framing a shot than Paul himself.) And ultimately, it's one of those films that makes you reflect on your own life, and what it would take to knock you out of your rut; there's times when you think maybe Paul is overreacting, whether he even needs to run, or whether had it all been left to come out he'd have been exonerated. But then you realise, he *wants* to run. And that made me at least reflect on what might be needed to jar me out of a safe existence, and if I had to run, where I would go, and how I would live. And if a film can inspire that kind of navel-gazing introspection, it's clearly got a lot going for it.

Captain America

I've always liked Captain America. Captain America was conceived in 1940, long before the USA entered the war, and represents the author Joe Simon's belief that what America should be doing is getting involved and punching Hitler in the face. You can't argue with a character genesis like that.

The film starts just after America's entry into the war, and we see asthmatic pipsqueak Steve Rogers serially trying and failing to get himself enlisted. We also see him ineffectually standing up to bullies a lot. Lots of heart, but no muscle to back it up. On his latest attempt to get enlisted, he is spotted by Dr Erskine, a German scientist who has a serum which gives people super powers. He was forced to use it once before on Nazi Bad Guy Johann Schmidt, but he's now defected to the allies, and is almost completely sure he's worked out the slight dermatological side effects now.

After an almost complete success in the first test (i.e. Steve Rogers gets Super Powers - Good; German spy assassinates Erskine, and all samples of the serum are lost - Bad) America is left with having only one super soldier. Who ends up somehow becoming a celebrity in a traveling USO show, under the name Captain America.

This isn't enough for Rogers, he wants to be fighting the bad guys on the front lines, not selling war bonds, so at the first sign of trouble he's off on an unsanctioned solo mission to rescue some captured allied soldiers from the clutches of evil Nazi science think-tank Hydra, commanded by Johann Schmidt. Schmidt, meanwhile, has managed to nick an awesome power source that used to belong to Thor's dad, and is using it to build weapons which will allow him to win the war at a stroke. And someone's really got to do something about that.

Basically, this is all dumb, good-hearted nonsense. Captain America as a proper good guy, no side to him, no dark edginess, just basically a guy who's going to stand up for what's right, no matter what. Schmidt, on the other hand, is a proper creepy Nazi megalomaniac, (it's Hugo Weaving! Of course he is! He made Elrond seem like a creepy Nazi megalomaniac!), and the whole thing starts off as a stirring tale of this brave kid taking a huge risk in order to be able to stand up to assholes like Schmidt, then it all kicks off in an epic maelstrom of punching things and shooting them.

It's easily as good as any of the other modern Marvel films; taken singly, I think any one of them is great. Taken as a body of films which are going to come together as The Avengers next year? My only problem is *next year*? Why not *now*?

Horrible Bosses

Jason Bateman, Chris Day and Jason Sudeikis have Horrible Bosses. Bateman works in some sort of unspecified corporate office, where Kevin Spacey screws him around, dangles the carrot of advancement, and generally treats him like dirt. Chris Day is a dental assistant working for dentist Jennifer Anniston, who basically sexually harasses him all day. Sudeikis works for a chemical company, for Colin Farrell, who's a scumbag cokehead with a bad combover, who's just inherited the company off his much nicer dad (Donald Sutherland), and is intent on driving the company into the ground so he can extract as much money as he can out of it.

So, the three of them get talking about their problems (Chris Day's problems being notably taken less seriously), and joke about how they should kill their bosses. Then realise that none of them is really laughing. So, they begin to hatch plots to bump off the banes of their existence.

Cue a tale of bungling ineptitude, as three guys who have neither the natural inclination or talent for murder attempt to bump off their bosses.

There's really only two performances in the film; one is the collective performance of the three hapless employees - singly, they aren't really up to much, but somehow, as a gaggle of wisecracking incompetents they manage to turn out one pretty good comedy protagonist. The other is Kevin Spacey, who as anyone who's paid the slightest attention to his career to date, will know is excellent at the bullying psycho boss type.

Is it funny? Yes. Could it be funnier? Oh yes. The black comedy isn't black enough, Spacey's performance is great, but basically exactly what you're expecting. Jennifer Anniston's good at what she does (flirty psycho), but really, she's the comic relief, and you don't really need comic relief in a comedy. Colin Farrell's character actually looks like he has the most promise, and he's sadly underused. I got the impression from the blooper reel in the trailers that they shot more scenes with him, so either they cut back on him to focus on Spacey, or the scenes just weren't funny, but the scenes he's in he puts out such a really creepy vibe, he's amazing fun to watch.

Ultimately, I think this film might have lost more than a few points in the cutting room; it looks like it might have been re-edited by committee, and we might have lost some of the better stuff. That's just me speculating though. As it stands, It's a film thats worth paying some money for, but not one that's going to make it into your DVD/Blu-Ray collection until it hits the bargain bins.

Harry Potter Seven And Three Quarters.

So, finally, the inevitable has happened, and the series drags itself over the finish line, is wrapped in a foil blanket and given a complementary bottle of Lucozade Sport for its trouble. It's been a long hard slog, and there was an alarming dip in pace towards the end, resulting in eight films out of seven books, but now it's all over bar the shouting and the special edition Blu-Ray boxed sets.

Obviously, any attempt to review the plot is futile. I don't think the book surprised anyone when it came out, much less the film of the most read book in the world. It is what it always is, well made, slavishly faithful to the text, with a few abridgements and practically no deviation. The performances are what they've always been; everyone by now very comfortable in their roles, and obviously aware, in-character and out, that this is the final act. In the last film (HP7a: Harry On Camping), it was very much a three hander between Harry, Ron and Hermione, and you'd have thought this would be rather different. But actually, much as it's possible to be alone in a crowd, despite basically everyone in the franchise coming back for their curtain call, this leads to very few scenes of any depth at all between Harry and anyone other than Ron and Hermione. In fact, I'd even go so far as to say Ron gets a bit short changed; Hermione stands revealed as the real support that Harry needs to prevail. Everyone else seems more or less to just say a few pleasantries and words of encouragement to Harry before he moves on, like he's having a big birthday party, and in having to talk to everyone, he hardly gets to talk to anyone. And in a way, that's how it should be. For all that he's got the greatest supporting cast in literary history (I think it's fair to say), ultimately, Harry is almost a man alone.

As to the film, well, I have my doubts. It's not that you can sit there and actually criticise it, call any of it rubbish, because it's not. It's well directed, and well acted, but ultimately, it's two hours of things that must dutifully be done before the end; a real sense of putting the chairs up on the tables, sweeping the floors, and turning the lights out before locking up. I think of the films of my own childhood that stand out, your Back To The Futures, and your Top Guns, and I can't see, much as it should be, that this is a film that will have that kind of impact as the backdrop to the lives of today's kids.

I couldn't help comparing the film to other films, to classics, because this is a would-be classic. The first half hour or so of this film is essentially a bank heist. And while the bank gets heisted because the plot demands it, this is no Ocean's Eleven. The meat of the film is essentially a siege; but this fails to convey either the doomed tenacity of the soldiers at Rourke's Drift in Zulu, or the shock and awe of the Imperial assault on Hoth in Empire Strikes Back. It's too inevitable now. Is anyone really going to be taking Voldemort up on his offer to leave them be if they hand over Harry? Even consider it in their darkest moments? No. Everybody, characters and audience alike, knows how this ends, Harry and Voldemort, to the death, for better or worse. The inevitability of it, for me, saps the tension right out of it. We finally have it explained to us the precise nature of the relationship between Harry and Voldemort, but this is no "Luke, I Am Your Father" moment.

This is as much a fault of the structure of the book; and you can hardly fault a book for not being structured like a film either. So there we have it, a sometimes time-consuming, but not unenjoyable chore is finally put to bed. I feel much as you might when you've just finished the washing up; basically quite pleased that all the dishes are now clean and put away in the cupboard.

Bridesmaids

So, the set up. Kristen Wiig is Annie, whose life is falling apart. Until recently, she had her own bakery, a nice (she thinks) boyfriend and looks set. The bakery gets hit by the recession, her boyfriend leaves her, and she's left working in a jewellery store selling engagement rings while labouring under the impression that love cannot ever last.

Her best friend friend Lillian (Maya Rudolph) however, announces that she is getting married, and that she wants Annie to be the Maid of Honour, which pretty much leaves arranging stuff like the hen night and the bridal shower to her. At which point she's introduced to Helen, a relative of the husband to be, apparently wealthy and perfect, and seemingly Lillian's would-be new best friend. And so a neurotic game of one-up-manship ensues.

Now, on the face of it, this is The Hangover, With Ladies. And this is certainly something which I think people who haven't seen either film say, in mutual condemnation of both films. However, The Hangover was a lot better than the sum of its parts, and so is this. Because what's important about The Hangover is that it's about how men are around other men, and this is a film about women's relationships with each other. One thing I'd point out is, while there are significant male characters in the film, the husband to be is not one of them; I don't think he gets a line, and if he does, it's hardly significant.

What this film is about, and where its heart is, is how you deal with the fact that as you get older, your life will go in quite different directions than your oldest friends, and how you can adapt to that. The core relationship in this film is Annie and Lillian, not Lillian and Whatever-His-Name-Was-It-Matters-Not.

If the film has a weakness, and you might not think that it is, is that the tone is all over the place. There's scenes between Annie and Lillian which are honest and truthful, and up there with the likes of films like The Kids Are Alright. And then ten minutes later, we're in the midst of a massively broad and crude extended vomit and diarrhea gag. And I guess it's really up to the audience whether they feel that makes the film an incoherent mess, or whether it's a case of a film with a pretty broad palette of where it'll go for its laughs. Myself, I enjoyed being caught off guard, as it wasn't entirely clear at any time which direction it would go next.

Bad Teacher

Let's look at the trailer first... So, it looks like Cameron Diaz is a appalling, couldn't-give-a-fuck teacher, whose only reason for being in teaching is to keep herself in money until she can snare a rich husband. The new teacher in school (Justin Timberlake) has family money, and she sets her sights on him, deciding she needs a boob job in order to get his interest. And thus sets about getting the requisite money in the most thoroughly morally reprehensible ways she can. Meanwhile a thoroughly good, through and through teacher decides to expose her as the menace to children everywhere that she is.

Aaaaand yeah, that's the joke, that's the film. I'm not saying that there's no other laughs at all in the film, but they're all variations on that; Cameron Diaz acting like the worst human on earth, and mostly getting away with it. If they'd taken the time to do a 15 second cut of the end of the film, stuck it on the end of the trailer, that'd be the film precised in as much detail as you'd need.

So, it's pretty shallow. So really if it's going to save itself, this film needs to tell that joke in a lot of funny variations. And to an extent, it does. Bad Teacher does bad things, then worse things, then even worse things, and Good Teacher basically drives herself mad attempting to expose same. And there's actually a pretty decent frisson of dark amusement as you realise that the film isn't even slightly interested in letting the good guy win. And that is the only thing that elevates this above being a pretty dumb average Hollywood comedy.