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In light of his directorial debut, the intense 1994 drama Once Were Warriors, New Zealand director Lee Tamahori was a surprising choice to head up several big budget Hollywood action films including the final Pierce Brosnan Bond film, Die Another Day, and Next. In between, he's also explored 40's-set mysteries (Mulholland Falls), battled the studios with the Baldwin and Hopkins against nature pic, The Edge, and even directed an episode of The Sopranos. This year, he's back to smaller budget filmmaking with the very unlikely and based (loosely) on fact tale of Saddam's son, Uday Hussein's body double, The Devil's Double.
In the film, Dominic Cooper (An Education, Captain America: The First Avenger) plays both Uday as well as his double, Latif Yahia, a decent man forced to pretend to be a sadist and a madman in order to protect his family from the Husseins' wrath. Tamahori spoke with Twitch recently about turning the story of the Husseins into a gangster film, keeping the project decidedly apolitical, and the state of his indie filmmaking career.
© Twitch
