If you enjoyed watching Liam Neeson battle territorial wolves in Joe Carnahan’s The Grey — and plenty of moviegoers have — then you'd be well-advised to look into Lee Tamahori's 1997 thriller The Edge. Starring Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin and perhaps best characterized by screenwriter David Mamet's trademark clipped dialogue, the film is an unusually strong entry in the survival-story tradition — and one to which The Grey owes at least a spiritual debt (if not more).
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Need a break from fluffy features depicting vampire weddings, cross-dressing Adam Sandler and dancing penguins? Look no further than The Devil's Double, Lee Tamahori's biographical drama about sadistic psychopath Uday Hussein (son of Saddam) and his body double, both played by Dominic Cooper. Ahead, the film's star discusses the difficulty of playing two characters in one fast-paced production.
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Tired of those run-of-the-mill biopics and staid Iraq war dramas that avoid sensationalism out of respect for their subjects? Want a peek into the orgiastic, debauched, ultra-violent underbelly of Saddam Hussein's Iraq? Director Lee Tamahori brought all that and more to an unsuspecting audience -- and conjured his own comparisons to David Fincher's The Social Network, naturally -- with The Devil's Double, the guiltiest thrill of Sundance 2011.
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