Movie Reviews
Iko Uwais stars as SWAT team member Rama in The Raid. Picture: Akhirwan Nurhaidir.
Sacha Baron Cohen’s previous films, Borat (2006) and Bruno (2009), were pin-sharp satires on certain aspects of contemporary culture, but The Dictator (16s) offers a different, broader kind of comedy. Directed by Larry Charles and co-written by Cohen, it’s the story of how Aladeen (Cohen), a brutal dictator of a fictional North African country, finds his humanity and an appreciation of his fellow man when he is reduced to penury on the streets of New York after being summoned to the US to explain his nuclear energy programme to the United Nations. It’s a timely piece of work: Aladeen frets about having to host Osama Bin Laden in one of his palace’s many spare bedrooms, after one of the Al Qaeda leader’s body doubles is taken out by Navy Seals in Pakistan; meanwhile, he harangues one of his minions about the fact that he doesn’t yet have a nuclear weapon, even though the Iranian leader Ahmadinejad does — “and he looks like a snitch from Miami Vice!” Those easily offended, and particularly the politically correct, are advised to steer clear of The Dictator; if Cohen took a scalpel to the culture in Borat and Bruno, here he wields a blunderbuss, and he isn’t taking any prisoners.
