What is it about sub-Saharan Africa that attracts such monumental evil?

Rating: Null/10 (8 November 2006)

Lots of buzz about Forest Whitaker made this a must see. The rehabilitation of Idi Amin would be a tough sell for the poster child of evil African dictator. An amateur pugilist he was rumored to have dealt death sentences personally. Clearly much too much larger than life to render meaningfully into a two hour film. Kevin Macdonald does his cause little service by having us divide our focus with a dilettante child doctor. James McAvoy is easy to watch but the character he is asked to play is so thin and poorly drawn as to be little more than distraction. I turned to my friend when our young doctor decides to sleep with Amin's number three wife and asked, "is any one that stupid?" She answered correctly, " young boys." I heard that once before from a woman priest describing a male colleague working his girlfriend's gams into a sermon. We do some pretty amazing things when in the clutch of testosterone. Nonetheless, it was too much to ask that we believe even a Scottish rake would risk torture and death for a roll in the hay. Come to think of it, Gillian Anderson (Scully from the X-Files) playing a sunbleached British nurse could get me to risk much. But I digress. As did The Last King of Scotland. Too often Amin's maniacal behavior was foreshadowed and too often we knew what was coming. The raid on Entebbe even made an appearance. We were asked to believe a Scottish doctor was smuggled out on the Gentile plane that left early on in the stand-off between Palestinian hijackers and the Israeli government. The Last King had a Readers Digest feel to it, extra large type and condensed to the point of a PowerPoint presentation.
What is it about sub-Saharan Africa that attracts such monumental evil? 300,000 Ugandans lost their lives under Amin, more than that were hacked to death in the eighties when the Hutu and Tutsi's went at it. Several hundred thousand are dead and dying under Sudanese rule. We cluck our tongue and bemoan the price of gas. What do we say to our children? We were too busy adjusting our 401K to do anything?