Critic Reviews

The perspective one gets from inside the House of Saddam is different than media reports from the outside and is, in itself, an important reason to tune in.

A chilling and riveting essay on the evils that men do and continue doing, year after year, century after century, millennium after millennium.

Made jointly by the BBC and HBO, House of Saddam is well told and often lurid, a saga that blends the dirty work of despotism with the rituals of family gatherings, sibling rivalries and marital discontents.

House of Saddam offers a fascinating but limited portrait of the Iraqi tyrant.

There are well-written and well-mounted scenes and some good performances. It is not without suspense. But even at four hours, House of Saddam feels incomplete and scattered--a lessened, not a heightened reality.

It's a refreshing take and an interesting effort, if finally not quite a compelling one.

House plays like an edition of PBS' Frontline with actors.

The production's appeal is all on the surfaces--in a moment where a killer's image is reflected in a fresh pool of blood, say, or a megalomaniac catches his own eye in the mirror.

The style of the telling--heavy and, ultimately, hollow--perfectly matches the substance of the story. But of course that lugubrious style makes House of Saddam a slog, even while it is precisely paced and seamlessly directed.

Witnessing every ugly twist in Hussein's long and arduous path to self-destruction is more grueling than you'd expect, in part because this script doesn't paint Hussein in very many shades other than the pitch black of pure evil.