Crazy Leader: Admiral General Haffaz Aladeen
Often overlooked in any critical take on Sacha Baron Cohen’s satires-on-steroids is the Cambridge-educated Englishman’s not insubstantial acting chops. Sure, when he’s portraying Ali G, Borat and his other preposterous inventions, his performances can sometimes feel not so much like acting as a kind of manic, unfiltered bit of improv. But that “Oh, he’s just being himself” interpretation of what he’s up to diminishes Baron Cohen’s uncanny ability to actually be his characters. In The Dictator, his portrait of the despicable President Prime Minister Admiral General Haffaz Aladeen (and his double, Efawadh) is at times howlingly funny: beyond the astonishingly offensive blather pouring from his mouth, he looks and sounds like the sort of self-assured, power-crazed maniac who might, in fact, rule over a northeastern African “republic.”
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3C3KzALgzIc]