I was looking forward to seeing this movie, but it was just ok. I don't think it really did enough to show how awful Amin really was. It was just too ambiguous. He is generally regarded as a monster but the film did little to reinforce that. The scene at the end when they hung the doctor with the hooks just didnt seem like something that would have happened in real life. Especially at an airport during an international crisis.
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Gotta agree.
And lots of threads here where people are busy discussing how bad was it of McAvoy to sleep the president's wife or other ridiculous stuff just shows that many viewers have no idea who Amin was. He was a monster, but so many people didn't understand it.
Most directors/writers want to make a statement about something concerning "the human condition", and this is no exception. Artists are rarely interested in making a simple polemic against a certain person.
In this case, the filmmakers used a childish character with too much power (Idi Amin) to talk about what happens when any immature person ("Nicholas Garragan") gets too much power: the naive youngster is taken by surprise by his own evil and is taught a lesson to last him a lifetime.
So, this is basically a coming-of-age that I think anyone who's been young and stupid and then grew up can relate to.
Agreed! I enjoyed the film but I was wanting to see more of Amin's brutality. It was a vague account of his cruelty and a very soft R rating.
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