The Devil's Double is based on the two books: The Devil's Double and I Was Saddam's Son, both written by Latif Yahia, A man, who from 1987-1992, was dragooned into service to be Saddam Hussain's eldest son Uday's fidai. A fidai is like a body double but with even a deeper meaning. It implies a relationship as close as a brother with all that word entails. Yahia was a childhood classmate of Uday's when they were in elementary school together. Even then, he was Uday's spitting image. He served in the Iran-Iraq War and was pulled off the front line by Uday. He was thrown into solitary confinement and then surgically altered to look like Uday. He then went through six months of training learning to walk and talk like him and serve as a double. What he saw for the next five years would see things that make most people's blood curdle. There is probably nobody in the world that represented the representation of the id more than Uday Hussain. Nobody was safe from him, even Yahia himself who was whipped more than once by Uday.
The movie comes off like a gangster flick, but really follows Yahia's true story fairly closely. It's hard to imagine someone as cruel as Uday, but the movie actually undersells him if that can be believed. It does glamorize some of the showier aspects of Uday's life, but believe it or not, it comes nowhere near the truth. The movie is a little exploitive, but surprisingly follows the events in the book closely except in the end when Yahia takes part in the assassination attempt on Uday's life that left him crippled and impotent. However, if you want a better film on the exploits of Saddam, watch HBO's superior miniseries, House of Saddam. All the important events in The Devil's Double are also told more accurately in the miniseries. This is an okay film, but not the best I've ever seen. For exploitation, it's fine, but for real history, watch the HBO version.
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