MR. SADMAN
by F.X. Feeney, LA Weekly

Saddam Hussein famously surrounded himself with identical doubles, to mislead potential assassins. In his feature debut, writer-director Patrick Epino poses the tragicomic question: What might have befallen one if he had been forced into early retirement, prior to the 1990 invasion of Kuwait? When Mounir (Al No’Mani, an impressive Saddam double) is injured on the job, gets fired and finds himself at loose ends with a wad of retirement cash, he buys a plane ticket to Hollywood. Epino maintains an amusing strategy throughout: Mounir never has so much as one line of dialogue; he’s as silent as any Keystone comic, and for a while this serves the movie well. For the first third, people project their interpretations upon him, to such lucky effect, that one hopes in vain for something like Being There. Unfortunately, the remainder of the film is weakly constructed, and rapidly falls flat. There’s a potential love story with a party-happy young passerby (Amanda Fuller) who fancies herself an identical double of Anna Karina. She’s lovely but nothing like the Danish Godard muse, a promising contrast with our hero, which goes unexplored. Her character is instead dropped cold and only picked up and dropped again later for increasingly cryptic narrative convenience. The tone then turns completely dark, which might have been interesting had Epino created any sense of anticipation. His potential as a filmmaker is considerable: The film is impeccably cast; it’s shot and cut well. Unfortunately, the secret of comedy is that it’s the highest form of suspense, and Mr. Sadman is just too bleakly episodic.

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