Sacha Cohen’s The Dictator & Saddam Hussein’s Novel

This film is putatively based on a novel written by Saddam Hussein and has Baron Cohen playing both a deposed foreign dictator and a goat herder.

It is loosely based on Zabibah and the King, a novel written by Hussein himself. The film:

Tells the heroic story of a dictator who risked his life to ensure that democracy would never come to the country he so lovingly oppresses. Sacha Baron Cohen plays the ruthless dictator and heads to the U.S. for a meeting at the United Nations onlt to find out that his number two has replaced him with an unsuspecting sheepherder lookalike. As the dictator wanders the city, he meets the owner of an organic food store, a beauty who’s immediately drawn to his dictatorial thinking. Then a little romance ensues.

Also note the strange Kadafi-like epaulets, which begs the question of how much the film will echo the real-world dictators thrown to the fore of the news cycle in the recent Arab Spring.

In addition to Cohen, the comedy drama has Ben Kingsley and Jason Mantzoukas taking the supporting roles. Larry Charles, in the meantime, serves behind the lens. The script is by Alec Berg, Jeff Schaffer and David Mandel.

At least the character depiction has much more in common with a Middle Eastern despot than the deluded Eastern European peasant from Borat. So hopefully this is not just another retread of Borat. The movie is slated for May 11, 2012 release across the United States.