Watchable movie about a guy who falls for the wives of others !

Rating: 4/10 (25 December 2009)

..more than one about the former Ugandan president (Idi Amin)!
This script transformed the whole thing into a melodrama mixed with some thrill at the end, not a movie about a nation or a dictator.
I believe the scriptwriter sunk in the character of the imaginary doctor, and his passion over the married women. This wasn't a right choice itself, because aside from taking a big part of (Idi Amin)'s transgressions and crimes, it took a lot from the lead's purity. That unsettled the character to face what he really deserves, and to be one of the last persons to judge the title's character. Actually when the husband gets revenge on the one who cheats his trust, and sleeps with his own wife, that, surely, gets the audience's sympathy, yet with the husband! Plus I didn't feel that the love affair between the doctor and the president's wife was a romance between 2 birds imprisoned in golden cages. For him, it was kind of emotional, too unbelievably risky, reaction towards taking away his freedom (or an affair with new married woman!). And for her?? The movie didn't give us convincing excuse to cheat on her husband else he's not that handsome young man!
There are many goofy points all along: the British diplomat speaks his mind freely in front of anyone white! (Amin) has no intelligence agency, knowing the place of his suspected minister only from his doctor who saw the man accidentally?! I didn't get why (Amin) doesn't permit his ill son, who has epilepsy, to get a remedy?? And how oh how this scary dictator knew about the affair between his wife and his doctor, and did nothing about it??? Moreover, Dr. (Garrigan) ran over an innocent victim at the assassination scene while he has no regret about that after? We knew nothing about (Gillian Anderson)'s husband who we don't see at the end while her escape?! And the movie portrays the (Entebbe) situation as the climax of (Amin)'s crimes, while it didn't give us any enlightenment about its details in the same time!
Who's (Idi Amin) in this movie? Look at the first meeting between the 2 main characters. The president didn't get mad over someone who grabbed his gun, and used it in front of him without his permission?!! He was happy that the doctor spoke his mind frankly (where was that?!), or how he thought totally afterwards that that doctor "saved his life"? We didn't even know what happened originally between the president and the cow? Then in another, more intimate, meeting between the 2 men, after curing the president's stomach, we think that finally we'll get the chance to hear something that may clear (Amin)'s depths, but we don't! And all what we had about even the man's awful deeds was a swift TV report, a hasty expulsion decision, then a couple of phrases here and there. Hence, it's not who's (Amin) in this movie?, it's rather where's (Amin) in this movie?
The third act was provocatively weird. It turns suddenly into cheap thriller, where the defeated lover wants to revenge on the husband who revenged on his unfaithful ones (is it a remake of Tony Scott's Revenge?!). So we have a suspense around will the president take the poison or not?, will his security manager take it instead of him or not?, will the boy get away with it, escape, going to be caught or not? And when the movie ends with his escape followed by the end of (Amin)'s regime; it's the top of idiocy as if this doctor was the one who exposed the truth to the world, being the basic reason of the dictator's windup!!
Still, this doctor's escape was justified from the movie makers, since he was what exactly; less evil, or hopeless lover?!! The dialogue of the Ugandan doctor at the end summarized the confusion of this script: "I don't know why I'm doing this. Maybe to redeem yourself and tell the world the truth about Idi Amin"?? So, what we learn from that? I'll tell you: Cheat on your crazy president, and it's fine since he's crazy! Paranoid men execute their closest men for a slight doubt, yet forgive their wives' adultery till the wife is pregnant with else's child! And yeah, the African presidents leave the ones who sleep with their wives free and harmless till they have a hostage situation in their airport!
The director kept things going on so tense. The image and the pace are hot, but not like (Amin) himself. Sometimes focusing on the man's exaggerated movements was smart, and sometimes it was just boring, especially with no showing for his inside as another stereotypical psychopath who's not worth exploring. "You're a child, so that's why you're scary" isn't an enough analysis. And after a whole movie, about a naughty doc, provided with the compulsory, forever disgusting, sex and nudity--it's naive. So with fictional story about one of (Amin)'s wives who sleeps with others to be pregnant with illegitimate son, then it's like calling the title's character names. Namely this movie didn't try to understand (Idi Amin), didn't get to show his corruption clearly, while what it did was enjoying humiliating him by fictional events. So despite the believable job that (Whitaker) did, I suspect that choosing him, with the obvious matter of his eye, was for utter deformation. But, as most of the movie, it was outwardly and false deformation more than the internal and real one.
With this movie, I did see the title's character, but didn't know him. I watched a drama about a boy who falls only for the married women, where the *last king of Scotland* was another cheated husband! At the end, the Ugandan doctor says to the Scottish boy: "Tell the world about what happened in Uganda". Well, explicitly after the end of this movie, I needed someone to do the same for me!