-->? A recently graduated Scottish medical student heads to Uganda in 1971 hoping do to good and have a little adventure. Instead, he becomes a close advisor to newly installed dictator Idi Amin (Forest Whitaker), who will turn out to be one of the most murderous leaders of his time. But the good doctor doesn’t know that. Although Amin was real enough, the doctor is actually a fictional character created by novelist Giles Foden.
+ Forest Whitaker is
a shoo-in Oscar nominee as the dictator of many moods. His Amin has a jolly,
almost goofy, presence when he’s trying to charm his young advisor, and an
equally convincing air of menace when needed. He is both canny enough and
slightly off-kilter enough to suggest both his ability to hold onto power and
his reputation of being crazy. The movie doesn’t shy away from depicting his
brutality. The doctor, played by James McAvoy (of The Chronicles of Narnia),
is the stand-in for the audience, knowing nothing about Uganda when he gets
there.
- The movie bills
itself as the story of Idi Amin, but it’s really the story of a callow youth
receiving a painful reality check. It’s told entirely from his point of view,
which does limit the movie’s scope. The movie hits the highlights, so to speak,
of Amin’s atrocities, but doesn’t tell you anything about the culture of
Uganda. I also didn’t get a clear sense of the passage of time.
= ***1/4 Worth
checking out for Whitaker’s performance and for its fanciful, but reasonably
believably told, tale of a doctor and a dictator. I didn’t realize the doctor
was fictional, and he was realistic enough that I assumed otherwise.
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