Uganda -- the great outdoors

Rating: 7/10 (12 March 2009)

I was curious to see a movie about the notorious Idi Amin but also had the erroneous notion that this movie would be about him in exile in Scotland, or something.
Then I was pleasantly surprised at how this movie managed to draw me in immediately. The story of a Scottish young MD doing a stint as a bush doctor had me from the start. James McAvoy as the protagonist Dr Nicholas Garrigan is great, the story is extremely well told and captivating. It has enough flesh on the bone to make a palatable movie on its own. Then Idi arrives on the scene, played exceptionally well by Forrest Whittaker. A behemoth of a man who could charm the pants off the pope. Young Nicholas gets his chance to live the good life at first as Amin's personal doctor, then as the health secretary.
I switched off the DVD player after about one hour and had the impression of an exceptionally good movie, one which believably, authentically captured the situation in a post-colonial African state. As I found out the next day, the movie sadly declines from there on and becomes an African version of Escape From Castle Wolfenstein. Nicholas -- otherwise a sensible feller -- elects to shag one of the dictator's wives, who is consequently, inevitably, brutally murdered and dismembered (this is based on a true-ish account of how one of Amin's wives died in a botched abortion and her lover committed suicide). Then Dr Nick becomes involved in the Entebbe hostage situation, suffers horrible torture when Amin reveals to him that he "knew all along" that he'd been shagging his missus but had apparently waited for an international diplomatic drama to evolve to spill his beans, and eventually escapes James Bond-style.
OK, so the first 60 minutes are great, the rest is a bit lacklustre. Still a remarkable movie overall, if a pretty fictionalised one. Keep in mind that it's not biographical and take it as an occasion to do a bit of reading-up on Uganda.