Seduction of the Innocent Abroad

Rating: 8/10 (9 February 2008)

Not just a historical chronicle, this film also tells an important lesson about morality in a world without consequences. The viewpoint character, a newly-graduated Scottish doctor, is presented as being morally uncentered to begin with. He is not driven to practice medicine in a Uganda clinic out a sense of moral obligation to his fellow man but to escape the shadow of his illustrious surgeon father. His other choices, to join Idi Amin as his personal physician, to turn a blind eye to rumors of atrocities being committed by Amin's regime, and later to seduce one of Amin's wives are made with similar casualness. Amin, as portrayed by Forrest Whitaker, is a man of seductive charm but with the appetites and vindictiveness of a spoiled child. He is a man without restraint in a world which imposes none upon him. As the film chronicles Amin's descent into butchery, it gives us the parallel story of the young doctor's slow slide into decadence. The climax to both stories comes at Entebee, during the famous Israeli hostage crisis, when the crimes of both the doctor and Amin himself can no longer remain hidden from the world. It is this two layered story structure that gives the film its great power. A western audience watching simply a day-to-day retelling of events within Uganda during this time, would likely remain emotionally distanced, tut-tutting at the misfortunes of others. The character of the doctor and his parallel story forces the viewer to participate in the day-to-day world of Amin's Uganda and to examine and question his own moral strength in the face of similar opportunities and choices.