It is a wide world, I know, and there are surely people in it more receptive than myself to the idea of a four-hour miniseries about Saddam Hussein. That seems a long time to spend with the man. (John Adams got eight-plus hours earlier this year, but he was a Great American and lived to be 90.) And there is Steven Soderbergh's upcoming 257-minute Che Guevara biopic, but that has Benicio Del Toro in it, at least, and a big-screen budget. "House of Saddam," which begins Sunday on HBO, is above average as docudramas go, but as docudramas go, "above average" is still something short of essential.
The film starts, like "The Godfather," with a party -- a seventh-birthday party for Hussein's daughter -- at which then-Deputy President Saddam Hussein (Igal Naor) makes Iraq's president an offer he cannot refuse: retirement. Hussein takes power, executes a chunk of the congress and personally puts a bullet in the head of his best pal just to prove himself a tough customer. "The man who can sacrifice even his best friend is a man without weakness," he tells his wife. He does this for Iraq, sort of, in whose glory he glories, but he has increasing trouble telling himself and his country apart. He looks moodily out the window, leans heavily over his desk. He doesn't have much fun.
