Overrated and Inaccurate

Rating: 5/10 (27 February 2018)

I watched this movie many years after it was released - having heard about it from so many people. I also thought that there was a fair bit of media buzz created when this movie was released. Although Forest Whitaker's performance was good, it was kind of overdone at times and wasn't too much to write home about. Having read so much about Uganda and Idi Amin, it is laughable how historically inaccurate this movie is. Most people would brush this off by saying "hey its just a movie". But its more than that, its a piece of history that was conveniently altered by Hollywood to create sensationalism. This movie will in no way help the millions of people around the world who have no clue about the history of Idi Amin. There is a lot of unnecessary drama in the movie that takes the focus away from the main historical events. Idi Amin was a psychotic monster in real life, but in the movie he appeared remarkably sane. Whitaker failed to communicate the fear and bone-chilling aura of one of the most brutal African dictators in modern times. The performances of the other actors were mediocre at best.
The character of Nicholas Garrigan is totally fictional. There was no white doctor who Amin was ever so close to, and no white man ever had an affair with his wife and got her pregnant. In fact, in real life Amin divorced his wife on national radio and later had her killed and her body dismembered. However, in this movie there is a made-up Hollywood romanticism that is all to familiar now - white guy leaves his cozy life to go to a third world country, has crazy adventures, gets laid all the time, penetrates into power circles with ease, several locals die, but the white man comes back home and lives to tell the tale! Towards the end of the movie, when the Air France plane is hijacked, the movie drags slowly to the point where Garrigan escapes on a plane full of refugees. They could have instead shown how the hostages were actually rescued by the Israeli Armed Forces in what was one of the finest rescue missions in history.
I think the script sort of ruined this movie. You can watch it for entertainment, but please do not confuse this for being actual history.