MovieChat Forums > House of Saddam (2008) Discussion > has nothing to do with reality...

has nothing to do with reality...




being from the middle east am dissapointed in this one, there is like a 10% grain of truth in this...from giving the mother too much influence as if she ran iraq behind the scenes!, to the idiotic depiction of saddam as a drinker! when its well known saddam wasnt a drinker, whilst here we see him saluting his comrades "to the new iraq" with whiskey! thats just laughable....not to mention the cartoonist image of chemical ali, plus how can u seriously go from 1980 to 1990 without a mention of rumsfield or US support despite halabja? or even better british support? and just for the record saddam didnt execute hamdan or ANYONE else with his bare hands, he ordered executions yes but he didnt shoot people dead in his living room lol so all in all this is just a nice soap opera to watch but not much to do with reality (not helped by having an israeli playing saddam and an iranian playing his wife! thats like hiring an italian to play winston churchill LOL couldnt they find arabs or iraqis to make it a bit more genuine?!)...

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I can't get into it.

It's curiously lacking in menace and tension and the guy who plays saddam just can't cut the mustard. If that performance isn't there, you're done for.

And Saddam just seems redundant now. As a bogeyman, he was ubiqitous. But now he's gone, it just seems it should stay that way.

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[deleted]

Yeah, when I saw that LG LCD TV in Iraq in 1995 I couldnt help shouting b**locks!!

It's ok but I hoped it would be a lot better.


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agreed, and he bollocks is endless, a CIA phone found on the street? saddam takes it home and keeps it laying around at his desk, then calls CIA from it (who didnt notice they havent heard from an agent for some time) lol then the cartoonist depiction again of Uday, who talks to the King of Jordan like he is talking to his driver (yeah rigt), does cocaine in the palace 3 minutes before meeting his dad (how would they know something like that?!), and more and more its like watching ace ventura lol i mean telling a king of a sovereign state "baba wont be happy" haha i dont think saddam actually sent uday on a political mission ever...

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Saddam actually called the CIA with a captured sat phone to tell them "all your men are dead".

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For the record LCD technology has existed for decades before it was commercially available. An LG branded LCD TV isn't realistic, and it is unlikely that Saddam was a tech guru in the know about bleeding edge stuff; and specially requisitioned LCD tech from his 'allies' that had access to it, but LCD screens, used as televisions did exist in '95.

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Actually, I think Saddam is the one thing that makes this worth to watch. The actor really does catch the horrific and psychotic side of the man. He is an iconic villain with a human side to it.

But I agree that it's hard to get into it. The material is too fragmental with the constantly shifting perspective and the unfulfilling roads it takes. They should've pick one side of the story, not that of the whole clan.

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its a fictional series, the scene of his capture for instance, now we all know he was under some sort of drug when the first pics came out,feeling out his beard and all,following a raid at dawn (he was probably sleeping u would guess someone like that would rather die fighting than give himself to the americans alive)... whilst BBC/HBO come out with a *beep* version where after firing 2 shots in the hole he comes out to the americans (no resistance so not sure whats the point of taking a gun with him) saying ok ok am willing to negotiate lol if he was willing to negotiate he wouldnt live in a hole....plus where is his farce trial? where is him in prison where he became more religious and wrote poetry? etc... this is am american version of things created for american audience and such a waste of british license fee payer money....

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You seem to think of Saddam as some sort of hero.

He gave himself up because he was a coward who wanted to live. He stole from Iraqi people, he killed anyone who challenged him, and looked after himself first and foremost. He thought he was untouchable. He was deluded enough to think he was divinely chosen and descended from Mohammed. He probably though he could still lead Iraq to victory against the US. He will go down in history as another psychopathic dictator.

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a coward who made fun of masked people putting a rope around his neck and hardly blinked when he was sentenced to death or hanged, lets see how tough you are in that situation...if he wanted to live he would have taken bush's offer pre the war to leave iraq with his sons and went to live in exile like a pinochet or musharraf u ....

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Mop, he had lost EVERYTHING but himself at that point, and was soon to lose even that. He had months to come to terms with it. It wasn't bravery, it was resignation. Yes he yelled - that's all he COULD do. I get the feeling you idolize him. Is that true? If he wanted to live - of course he wanted to live - but at the beginning of the war, he felt invincible, and never for the life of him thought the US would go through with it (invasion). This is proven in the interviews he gave after capture.

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[deleted]

>>this is am american version of things created for american audience and such a waste of british license fee payer money....<<

Well, but of course, I am sure that there are certain people behind this show. I am quited bored just starting it to be honest. But the same people will believe this as the Bible truth who also believe that Saddam had something to do with 9/11. People such as my Catholic friend who at times do not use the brain that God gave them.

Truth is, if he really had the WMDs that Bush perpetuated, he would have used them in an instant when we invaded. What he did get from the Russians, I have read, was so old that it was unlikely that they would gave even been functional. He had nothing, he knew that, he tried to tell people that, but his own people were against him by that point, and with Bush so anxious to get rid of him, well, his history was written the day that the Supreme Court of the United States appointed George W Bush as the United States President.

I would not be surprised to see some major civil unrest in the States if Obama is not successful. We have all of the elements for it, a bad economy, a country divided far more than any time in history after the Civil War. For as many people as blindly follow these supposed stories of Saddam, and GW, are as many people who do not believe any of it. I for one truly believe that GW was either involved in 9/11 or at least knew about it coming and did nothing to stop it.

I am glad that Saddam is gone. But why Iraq? Why do we make an example of that country yet we do nothing to help Darfur? And for that matter, where are all of the $$ from the oil in Iraq gone? But, I digress. This is one boring television movie. Very disappointed in HBO.

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Yes,British support,selling Iraq Hawker Hunters in the early 1960s really important I am sure,any evidence of big American or British arms shipments to Iraq after the 1970s?

There is a lot of evidence of Eastern Bloc and Chinese equipments but not much British or American.

The issue of actors playing the parts has already been covered,why employ someone because they are Iraqi when you can have a skilled actor from anywhere.

Some of the critics of this drama seem to object to object to the way that Iraq is shown to have been run by an evil lunatic who made lots of mistakes.

Of course it is a drama and not a documentary but I think a lot of the events shown happened much as depicted,such as the mass meeting and the people been led away to be shot for example.

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yes here is some evidence, or u expect imdb posters to produce for you live pictures of american weapon shipments from 1986 to believe it lol support is support, whatever form, and if the US was on the iranian side he would have lot...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._support_for_Iraq_during_the_Iran-Iraq_war

"American military commitment that had begun with intelligence-sharing expanded rapidly and surreptitiously throughout the Iran–Iraq War. A former White House official explained that "by 1987, our people were actually providing tactical military advice to the Iraqis in the battlefield, and sometimes they would find themselves over the Iranian border, alongside Iraqi troops." p. 38

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I don't expect live pictures but show me some pictures of Iraqi troops driving British or American tanks rather than Russian tanks or carrying M16s instead of AKMs or flying Harriers instead of Migs.
You get the idea ? there are hundreds of photos of the Iraqi army using Soviet bloc and Chinese and even French and Yugoslav equipment and no pictures of western gear.
There are also lots of articles and books about the Iraq war,they mention that the US and UK trained some special forces and provided intelligence but the Iraqi armed forces were Soviet backed and trained and armed.

The West and the arab world wanted Iraq to beat the revolutionary (and Persian) Iranian state.

Wikpedia is a great thing but the articles are written by people who may or may not be experts on the subjects they write about.

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That's because there has been a massive coverup by the neo-cons you fool.

I totally agree with the original poster, Saddam was not perfect but he was a great man and this series is a shame to his memory.

Also Saddam did not have any WMDs, Bush knew that, you know why he knew? Because it was Bush and the Israelis that used WMDs against the Kurds to test the weapons AND make Saddam look bad.

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He's not a "fool", but you're one, and a horrible human being too.

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You've got to be kidding...lol!
You people, with all your conspiracy theories, not even sure what to say to you...the only word that comes to mind is, CRAZY!

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"Saddam was not perfect but he was a great man and this series is a shame to his memory"

You're *beep* clueless man. Saddam was a brutal, sick, twisted and sadistic dictator that pillaged Iraq as a nation, turning it into his own personal playground while killing anyone who dared even blink an eye at him. Him and his sons along with his sick Baathist regime were directly responsible for the torture, mass killing, rape of thousands, millions even.

For you to say that "Saddam was not perfect" is absolutely no excuse for what he did during his evil tenure and if anything shows that you're a complete idiot. Then you go on to describe him as "a great man" HUH?! Define "great"?? WTF made him great in any way, shape or form?

You're lost man, and ignorant to say the least.

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How do you know? Were you part of his government? I fail to see how Saddam having a glass of whiskey equates to 90% of the whole thing being a lie. Also, this is an interesting fact but one that alot of people don't know or just don't like to mention, but the US and UK provide Saddam with less than 2% of his weaponry compared to Russia and China providing around 40% each and even the french provided around 10%. One last point, If the Italian looked like Churchill there would be no problem with him playing the part. The fact is the actor looked like Saddam.

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it was well documented in arabic media and books he hated drinking, thats how i know, besides ur question could be posed to screenwriters, how did they know? were they in his govt? plus the 90% i mentioned a lot of stuff ommitted, for example in his late years saddam was deeply religious, by the confession of his american guards, praying 5 times, always holding a koran, writing poetry, citing verses durng his trial,,,,this is different from the secular powerful saddam of 80s who made fun of religious iran, so this shift wasnt reflected at all....plus the fact his defence lawyer (one of them) was a former US justice minister who called his trial a farce! but we didnt see anything, so the screenwriters allocated 5 seconds from his capture to hanging (3 years in real life and a factual event), and 3 minutes for the scene where uday sees a maid in the palace he likes, takes here to the bathroom, does the dirty with her, snorts cocaine and goes out back (fictional story as far as we know)....wow!

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While Saddam Hussein did publicly denounce drinking, he did drink occasionally himself. He preferred to drink Cognac. I know this because I worked as a reporter in Iraq in the mid 1980's, and personally saw him drink on at least three occasions. I also have colleagues who saw him have a drink many other times. So Mop_gov, please don't come on this board acting like a know-it-all, when you really don't know what you're talking about. I value everyone's opinion, but you're just speaking nonsense. Thanks.

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mop_gov, if you really have a Middle Eastern background [as do I, Iran to be exact] then you would know the Arabic media was going to paint Saddam to the best they could for either fear of death or just simply because they wanted to. When Saddam came into power it was a well known fact that many people started out loving the man, what would they think if their leader came out and admitted to drinking alcoholic drinks when he was supposed to be a strong Sunni Muslim? How would he have ever gotten his men and troups to fight the Iranians the way they did if they didn't truly believe this man was a man worth fighting for? Especially when his own people knew about 60% of his country were Shia's who would put religion first over any kind of pan-Arabism.

Many people, his own included especially, didn't know for many years how the man even came into power. They thought it was because people wanted him there and voted on it. It wasn't until years later they realized what was truly going on behind the scenes. Shifting ballot boxes to vote for him, intimidation of the original leader to become president himself, etc etc. He was also all over radio stations, television stations, statues, this man had to try his hardest to make himself look like he was some kind of God send, especially during the Iran-Iraq war, or not a soul would have supported him, especially since the better part of the country were Shia's.

While I agree there were a lot of key elements left out of this show, it was still very solid in how it decided to portray the man. If this was more than a four part series, say nine or ten episodes, then it would have been much easier to paint the man with a broader brush and dive into everything that happened during his time.

Bottom line: What he told his mother when she was dying is anyones guess. But believing his words like he didn't drink alcohol at any time in his life is hilarious though. Most people, religious or not, have done it at certain times in there life. It fails to register with me why some tyrant would authorize and carry out malicious attacks against Kurds, yet never pick up a drink.

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They did take quite a bit of artistic license with this series, BUT a lot of it was reality.

For example, he may not have had an alcoholic drink after overthrowing the man that was in charge before him, but he definitely forced the man to voluntarily give up power to Saddam, using some weak-azz excuse. He also definitely killed his brother in law, although, just like in the series, he said that it was an "accident".

Uday was a sick SOB. I don't know if what he said to the King of Jordan is correct, but while in exile he threatened to stab someone with a knife at a restaurant in Switzerland. This is to say nothing of the countless women he raped (some with their husbands present) and killed, athletes tortured, etc. It's no wonder he never married. And if anyone knew anything about drug abuse then you'd know that when you're screwing around with heroin, ANYTHING is possible, and few things you wouldn't do.

And Saddam getting all pious after his imprisonment doesn't mean anything in the grand scheme of things; people on death row get all religious, are you going to sing their praises too?

Saddam and the men in his family were responsible for the deaths of over 800,000 people (possibly in the millions), and anyone who defends anything they did, or think that they weren't capable of more, is out of their freakin' mind.

Calling him "great" is easily the dumbest, and most insane things I've ever heard (or read in this case).

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Saddam personally executed lots of people.

During/after the uprising in 1991 he visited a prison, sit on a chair, and shot lots of prisoners with a hundgun until he got bored/tired/vented his anger.

(The show shows nothing of the uprising, only the non-existing US leaflets over Baghdad.)

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This thread has brought out all the crazies, including the ignorant OP who has no idea that much of the things he thinks are wrong are very easily verified.

If this were real life, it would be a nice place to hold an ambush, because so many of you truly psychotic individuals shouldn't be able to walk away from this.

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That's stupid. A lot of the actors in the God Father weren't Italian but they pulled off the roll.

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