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Sundance can be grueling—every hour of the day and into the night, there are films to see, panels to attend, swag to gather, and of course, parties to enjoy. Even as the sunsets you’re rushing from one premiere to the next, crowding onto frigid buses buzzing with all the news: “Did you hear Margin Call’s press screening was a madhouse?” “Yeah, it just got picked up by Lionsgate.” People swap which films are musts and which are must-nots, and which are just so gloriously outrageous that you can pass up the opportunity—last night that was Lee Tamahori’s Uday Hussein biopic The Devil’s Double.
John Cooper introduced the film to a packed-late night crowd at the Eccles with a satanic grin—people had no idea what they were in for. Sure, when you think a “biopic about the Son of Saddam Hussein” you think some staid, restrained, gritty melodrama about the perils of power. In some way, The Devil’s Double could technically be classified like that, but in Tamahori’s hands, it’s an outrageous film that is a guilty pleasure.
© Condé Nast Digital.
