Easy to see why Forest Whitaker won the Oscar for best actor. Good movie.

Rating: Null/10 (16 June 2007)

I was an adult in the 1970s, raising my own family, when Idi Amin was in power. Although I was never deep into world affairs, I distinctly recall the controversy in Uganda until he was overthrown in 1979.
Forest Whitaker is General Idi Amin Dada, and does a remarkable job creating this character. I have been a Forest Whitaker fan for a number of years, and he is sufficient reason to see this movie. In my mind it must go down as one of the best ever dramatic performances in film.
As the DVD extras clearly tell us, the story is fictional, set during a real period. Scotsman James McAvoy plays the fictional character Dr. Nicholas Garrigan, a young doctor wanting to get away from home and go somewhere to make a difference. Spinning the world globe, his second attempt, his finger lands on Uganda.
Dr. Garrigan quite by accident comes to the aid of Amin, taping up his sprained hand. But by dubious fortune, Amin takes a great liking to him, and makes him his personal physician, and eventually adviser. When Garrigan seeks a way out of this, he finds that it appears to be impossible and sill stay alive.
In the script a telling exchange, after Amin had exiled Asians from Uganda and received bad press from around the world. Amin: "Why didn't you tell me not to send the Asians away?" Garrigan: "But I did tell you that." Amin: "Yes, Nicholas, but you did not persuade me." As the story unfolds we increasingly see the two sides of Amin, the gentle and the irrational.
SPOILERS. Garrigan has an affair with one of Amin's three wives, the pretty and younger one, and she gets pregnant. When Amin finds out, the wife is killed, dismembered, and sewed together with legs where arms were, and arms where legs were. Garrigan was tortured by Amin's men, but he manages to escape as some refugees from a hijacked plane are allowed to leave Uganda. In this fictional story, when Dr. Garrigan was able to tell the world about what was really happening in Uganda, world opinion changed and Amin was eventually exiles to Saudi Arabia where he died many years later. It has been said that his regime killed 300,000 Ugandans.