The Last King of Scotland

I just finished watching The Last King of Scotland, about Idi Amin and his personal physician. I'm still feeling a bit sick from it, so perhaps it's not the best time to write a review, but it is certainly still fresh in my mind.

Note: This post contains lots of spoilers.

Basically, the protagonist, Dr Garrigan (okay, it's not that fresh - I can't remember his first name) moves from Scotland to Uganda right after med school, looking for adventure and perhaps to help a few people. He goes to an Amin rally in the countryside, gives him some slight medical assistance, and is invited to Kampala (the capital) to become Amin's physician. He likes Amin pretty well, like the rest of Uganda seems to, and Amin likes him and makes him his closest advisor. But then things begin to turn sour. Garrigan informs Amin that the Minister of Health (Amin's other main confidante) appears to be up to something fishy, and Amin should talk to him; the Minister of Health disappears. Garrigan realizes things are getting bad, and wants out, but Amin won't let him leave. (At the same time, Garrigan and one of Amin's wives are having an affair.) Garrigan goes to a British guy and is told if he wants help at this point, he needs to kill Amin.

Right after that, Amin's wife finds out she's pregnant (by Garrigan) and wants an abortion so Amin won't find out. But he does anyway, and has her body torn apart as an "example." Garrigan now has more reason to kill Amin, and gives him some "headache medicine" that will cure headaches for good. Before Amin takes it, though, they're interrupted by the hijacked flight that lands in Entebbe with Israeli hostages. While Garrigan is seeing to the hostages' needs, Amin's head of security takes the pills and gives them to a young soldier to test if they're poisoned. Garrigan, being a good doctor, rushes out to stop the kid from swallowing it. Of course that gives it all away. Amin has him strung up from the airport ceiling by hooks in his chest, and I really thought he died, but apparently it wasn't that bad (just incredibly gruesome). The Ugandan doctor Garrigan had been working with bandaged him up after the soldiers left, and told him to get out and tell the world what Amin was doing. All of the non-Israeli hostages were being let go, so Garrigan managed to slip in with them as they got on the plane, and just made it out of the country. The footage at the end is of a rejoicing Uganda after Amin is finally thrown out in 1979. (It was real footage, which was cool.)

So, long summary. I liked (can't really say enjoyed) some things about this movie: lots of African kids and countryside, the tying in historically with things like the Entebbe hijacking, and Garrigan's change from "just trying to have fun" to realizing the results of what he was doing and changing. I didn't like Garrigan for most of the movie, until he started to realize what a fix he was in - and one of his making. That's something I can sympathize with.

There was a lot of disturbing things in the movie, too, but not in the way Hotel Rwanda or Sometimes in April or movies like Schindler's List are disturbing. All but about a minute of the violence (when Garrigan finally found out what was going on around him) was directed at Amin's wife, who died a horrible death, and Garrigan. What has happening in the rest of the Uganda was mentioned in passing, but didn't really feel connected to the main story. And Amin didn't really seem evil; a bit crazy, but there wasn't any real hatred or cruelty until he suddenly starts doing incredibly gruesome things in revenge. It felt...I dunno, very Hollywood. That part of the movie just felt a bit inexplicable, based on what I'd seen of Amin up till then. It showed the innocent face that evil can wear for a while, I guess.

Perhaps this is just Ugandan partisanship on my part, but I felt it was almost racist (wrong word, but I can't think of anything better) to make a movie about Idi Amin and have the only real torture and violence be directed at a white man (and Amin's wife, who slept with the white man). I mean, if my parents or grandparents had been killed in the 70s and their bodies been left unburied, I probably wouldn't care very much what happened to Garrigan, who really shouldn't have been involved in the first place. But I guess that's just the story the moviemakers chose to portray, I shouldn't be faulting them for that. And it is an interesting story.