i had never heard of this film before alf told me to go watch it, i thought it was about scotland 
. nope, he said, it's about idi amin, the former ugandan dictator (who i also didn't know anything about, i thought he was a terrorist or something). so, i was going into it, not knowing what to expect (apart from violence 
), and hoping for a good film. i think i thought it was pretty good, loosely based on a novel by the same name, which is obviously based on a fictional story about the real-life dictator. obviously some parts of the story must resemble real life situations, but only some of the major non-plot related things.
it centres around dr nicholas garrigan, who is a doctor from scotland, that decides that he wants to get away from his father. he chooses to go to uganda to work as an aide doctor. he helps idi amin with a sore hand, and then becomes his personal physician. idi amin, is portrayed as a bit of a crazy man, and is constantly contradicting himself, and blmaing others for issues. sometimes he calls garrigan his closest advisor, sometimes he calls him just a doctor.
anyways, garrigan has an affair with one of amin's wives, and gets her pregnant (i think), when she goes to have an abortion (i think), amin finds out, and has her chopped up (very gross). then, garrigan is found out, when he tries to kill amin with poison, and is tortured. he escapes with the help of one of his colleagues (who gets killed), on a flight carrying hostages (this was supposedly a real situation).
i thought it was a pretty good film, "two thumbs up" , a bit of violence, some funny parts (mainly involving idi amin and his paranoia, and i don't know what you would call it, his personality maybe), and a good storyline.
a funny side note, i got to alf's place ten minutes late, i didn't realise we also had to pick up ozzy, so we were about fifteen minutes late for the film's scheduled start time. we were contemplating changing movies, but didn't, and managed to make the start of the film by about ten seconds.
picture taken from wikipedia
#33 dtra (david tran)
there you go, forest whitaker (aka idi amin) won the oscar for best actor. and the departed got a couple of oscars too, so i'm not just seeing stupid blockbuster films. i prefer good films anyway .
dtra
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6:16, 26th-feb-2007