Great premise, first-class actors but they can't save the lame script.

Rating: 6/10 (11 March 2019)

With the fine cast assembled here, it'd be hard to go off-track with this story, (the brutal reign of the leader of Uganda Idi Amin) yet somehow that's exactly what seems to happen. It's also hard to imagine anyone but Forrest Whitaker playing Idi Amin. Whitaker captures the compelling, competent and confident personality that drew supporters and followers from all over the continent, (as at first many felt Amin personified post-colonial Africa of the 1970's with the slogan "Africa for Africans") - but that quickly went horribly wrong. Whitaker also emanates real and scary menace portraying the real Idi Amin that the world came to know that became the tyrant and despot that ruled Uganda during the 1970's. But with the telling of the story through white doctor Nicholas Garrigan (James McAvoy) causes something to get lost in translation.
Certainly using the white protagonist does make the story easier to watch for some of us as the easily-identifiable character. But while there's a lot happening here, none of it seems interesting or even coherent for long. The audience is not carried along by the story so much as led by fits and starts. Garrigan comes to realize that the formerly warm and pleasant Uganda he had come to like, has become a tropical prison that he'll never be allowed to leave (since Amin values his services too highly to permit this). But other then Garrigan's obvious (and very relatable) terror at this revelation, there's not a lot that's interesting happening in the story.. Limited by budget restraints, presumably, the story can't keep things entertaining enough and too much seems to happen off-screen. The story had a lot of potential - Idi Amin was a very "exciting" guy while running uganda as he did (into the ground) - but this movie somehow captures very little of it.
Might be worth a watch for Whitaker's interesting portrayal of Idi Amin, and the whole take on Uganda during this time. Other then that there's little of interest in the story.