This review contains a few mild spoilers.

I think most people will think of the The Last King of Scotland is great film. Forest Whitaker gives a great performance as Idi Amin Dada, the people of Uganda are wonderful, the lead role, a young and brash Dr. Nicholas Garrigan (played by James McAvoy) acts in a way which draws in viewers' interest.

My girlfriend enjoyed it, and I think most other people would enjoy it too.

That said, I can't say I hated it -- it was indeed interesting, well-acted, etc. -- but (first drawback) I've always been annoyed by films where the tension is created by having the main character be stunningly stupid. And this is indeed one such film. (And he's also fairly immoral in certain ways, but that, I suspect, is only to bolster his stunning stupidity.)

Secondly, as I discovered soon afterwards, this film occupies one of my increasingly-popular cinematic categories. When watching a fictionalized history film like this, the viewer knows full well the main character is "made up". But, unconciously, we absord the background itself as "real." Yet, while doing so, such films often implant a specious historical retelling or interpretation.

In particular, many things about the movie imply to the viewer that Idi Amin was basicly installed into power by the British. It doesn't come out and say this -- but it weaves carefully-selected historical snippets into a narrative which gives the largely uniformed viewer (myself included) that impression.

For example, Nigel Stone, a British intelligence official, is used to represent the author's and director's views of the British's view of Amin. While in a tailor shop, Nicholas, our young-doctor protagonist, looks out the window and sees a nice-looking man being grabbed by officials and shoved into a car trunk in broad daylight.

The unpleasant-looking British intelligence officer explains the scene darkly:

"Obote's men. They're everywhere.... and they're Communists. My dear. Amin's more than a match for them. He's ex-British army, Kings' African Rifles... Yes, he's a little unpredictable, but he's got a firm hand..." (Leans forward, and says, in low tones implying racism:) "... the only thing the African really understands."

Later, an associate of Stone, a high-cultured British diplomat drives this home, assuring Nicholas that Amin is "definitely one of us." And later still (spoiler here) Stone finishes off the impression -- by implying the British intelligence have tired of their plaything (Amin), and are trying to assassinate him and thus replace him with another.

So when I was done watching the film, my thought was: "Well, this is a good moral lesson about why it's so wrong for the US and British to be putting such people into power." (A bit of research showed me I'd been suckered again.)

And the film's bonus material makes that narrative even more explicit: Idi Amin, who killed upwards of 300,000 of his fellow Ugandans, was pretty much forced ot do what he did by the British. It is we who bear primary responsibility for his actions.

"When he was in the British Army, he was kind of a licensed killer. And there are all sorts of stories about things that he did in the British Army. And that was kind of let go, because he was, as I said, he was licensed to do those things." [Kevin MacDonald]

"I think we can say the British were responsible for Amin. They found him, they made him a Sargent-Major, and because they not produced a black officer class in Uganda, at independence, they said 'Okay, who are most senior people? We have got... look at this big chap!' [Jon Snow, Journalist]

"... the British had promoted Amin to effendi, thereby ensuring he was one of the most powerful men in the Ugandan army." [Narrator]

Yet this narrative completely omits several inconvenient decades of history. True, Amin rose to a high rank, but it was because of his natural military talents (his former commander admitted "He was a born leader of men and he was a very successful soldier"), not because the British particularly wanted to "ensure" this particular man was in power, because they had some prescient knowledge of his future utility.

And observe the exact timeline:

In 1954 Amin was made effendi (Warrant officer), the highest rank possible for a Black African in the colonial British army. Amin returned to Uganda the same year.... He was then assigned to quell the cattle rustling between Uganda's Karamojong and Kenya's Turkana nomads. [1]

Uganda became an independent nation in 1962, with Edward Muteesa II, the Kabaka (King) of Buganda as the President and Commander in Chief of the armed forces, and Milton Obote as Prime Minister. [2]

In 1962, Amin was promoted to captain, and to Major in 1963. The following year [1964], he was appointed to Deputy Commander of the Army.... 1965: Colonel, Commander of the Army [3]

In 1965 Prime Minister Milton Obote and Amin were implicated in a deal to smuggle ivory and gold into Uganda from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. [4]

In 1966, Obote overthrew the constitution and declared himself president, ushering in an era of coups and counter-coups which would last until the mid-1980s. Obote was deposed twice from office, both times by military coup d'etat. [5]

And thus Amin seized office in 1971.

Notice that Amin's rise to power continued quite after the British had left, and that Obote was twice deposed by coup -- Amin simply succeeded because he was Obote's ally and was a bit smarter about how he did it.

Yet in the the minds of the those cited in the bonus material, it's almost as if black Africa has no life for itself: no history of it's own, no actions, an certainly no moral culpability -- instead, they are mere marionettes on the hands of White Power, incapable of independent action. Certainly not sentient moral beings.

Indeed the film's director, Kevin MacDonald, admits this is exactly his view -- Amin was a mere puppet until he became "President":

"In some horrible way, he was like a sort of puppet come to life. He was like a plaything of the empire, that turned around and said 'Boo!'"

And the bonus material takes this even further:

"In the early 1970s, there was still a lot of racism about. And I think that Amin appealed to a racist stereotype of Africa. If he hadn't existed, we would have had to invent him. He was a perfect kind of larger-than-life, ogreous, you know, people-eating monster of a dictator... that kind of filled a tabloid need: 'See? That's what they're like!'" [Jon Snow, Journalist]

All the stories about his cannibalism and witchcraft and m-multiple partners... he kind of represents all that's savage and worst about 'the dark continent.' [Kevin MacDonald, Director]

Amin was not demonized because he murdered 300,000 people and turned his country into a fear-filled house of horrors. No. He was demonized because of his skin color. Anti-colonalist narratives supercede common sense.

"One of the reasons that he's so demonized, too, is that he's a figure that really stood against colonization. Very clearly, that's what he did too, like: 'Get out! We can handle our own affairs!'" [Forest Whitaker, Actor]

But the truth is that the British actually broke off relations with Amin, rather than the other way around. Indeed, the bonus material even refers to this, contradictorly, while placing some blame for Amin's genocide on the international community's "isolation" of Amin:

"Isolated abroad, and with mounting opposition at home, an increasingly paranoid Amin began to place uneducated tribesmen and soldiers in governmental posts and positions of power. They were able to detain, and to kill with immunity." [Narrator]

(You see? These second-level men were the killers -- because they were "uneducated tribesman", and thus apparently incapable of moral responsibility or restraint.)

And yet again, the international picture was not in line with the impression being created in the viewer's mind:

But the West's blind eye toward Amin was such that, as the U.S. ambassador to Uganda at the time, Thomas Melady, recently noted, the human rights-oriented administration of future Nobel Peace laureate Jimmy Carter refused to impose even the most minimal sanctions (such as on Ugandan coffee) on Amin's regime. And this was an administration that unhesitatingly penalized Argentina for human rights abuses against educated, middle-class Marxist terrorists. [6]

And, contrary to the anti-colonalist narrative, Amin didn't make Uganda totally independent -- instead, he replaced one set of allies with another, saying many words against the British, yet placing Uganda increasingly in alliance (and under the influence of) radical Communist and Islamic nations like the USSR and Libya.

I saw no mention that Amin was deposed when Tanazia -- a nation he'd invaded -- took over, briefly, to remove him from power -- and rescued by Quadaffi. I suspect some viewers, following the British-were-trying-to-kill him theme present in the film, might have thought British intelligence drove him from office. That certainly crossed my mind -- until I discovered the history.

There is much in the bonus material discussing what a great, wonderful, and complicated fellow Amin was: he was not the two-dimensional "monster" we think. Yet (and I remember the press accounts) Amin was never presented as being merely two-dimensional. Nor, for that matter, are most dictators mere monsters: in addition to being ruthless, they are also frequently charming, suave, personable, and well-organized. (Indeed, most could not have risen to become dictators if it they did not possess these qualities.) And they often love animals, or their families (Stalin's daughter had few complaints), or certain ethnic groups.

There are a few other problems with the movie: it seems the narrative dismisses as "myth" several things which may have actually been true. For example, it appears Amin himself said he found human flesh "too salty" [7].

So as entertainment, yes, well, it's interesting. But as history -- and I expect most viewers did come away with the idea Amin was a British-created monster, as I did -- it's yet another entry in the leftist pantheon of narratives which will, each in their own small way, become lodged in the back of viewers' minds.

Update: There's something I'd like to add in retrospect: The film was gorier than it needed to be. This might be an odd statement concerning a film about a man who killed 300,000 of his fellow countrymen, but it's true: the goriest things about the film were actually pulled from the minds of the undoubtedly-white filmmakers.

In particular, there is a rather gruesome torture shown which is attributed to the practices of African tribemen, circa the 1920s, when Idi Amin was born. But I just don't believe that inland Africans of that era would have had, and used so horrifyingly, largish metal hooks with small eyeholes. Coupled with the attribution, this comes across as so much white liberal racism: for all the protestations in the bonus materials of how whites "needed" to see blacks as barbaric savages, the special effects department appears (or director?) to have done exactly that. (See also the quote above about Amin the puppet.)

Given that there were so many real atrocities happening ("it's easier to kill a man than a chicken, because you have to pay someone for the chicken"), it's odd that the filmmakers chose to focus on two which didn't actually occur. (The second being the horrifying arrangement of the sewn-together limbs. The sewing-back-on may have happened -- to make the body more presentable -- but almost certainly not that way.)