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So, I watched "The Last King of Scotland" last night. What an awful movie. What the hell was I thinking?
All the cliches were in place. Someplace in Africa is important because it's being seen through white eyes: check. Africans doing strange and wonderful things as seen through the oversaturation of color: yup. Africans doing outrageously cruel and crazy-violent things without remorse: why make a movie about Africa without that? One does not need to be an apologist for Idi Amin to hope for a little more context and history.
I admit I should have known better. I remember some positive review by some reviewer I liked and just put it in the to-see pile in my head. I also thought it was going to be a movie version of a true story, not the dramatization of a story inspired by an interpretation of a reflection of actual events which it turned out to be.
This is important only because while I expect non-fiction accounts to be self-serving, I also expect them to, if only to forestall criticism, be linked to a historical timeline and not make up things that are purely absurd. Not in this film, that's for sure!
Amin is so childlike (or insane) that just because some adventurist white doctor dude puts a splint on his injured wrist, he decides to let him implement policy for the entire post-coup nation. Those African tyrants sure are wacky! The person the book was originally based on at least was someone who Amin had known or known of for years since he was living in Uganda and employed by the English Army. One assumes that person had seen and done some hard things. In the movie the protagonist is some confused almost-hippie, almost do-gooder fresh out of med school who went to Uganda to escape his father issues. I mean Christ, Amin may have been evil but since he managed to rise from rural poverty to leader of a country, at least give him some credit for cunning.
Instead Amin constantly calls for counsel with someone who has the real life experience of an inner-city 8 year old. The movie tries to hedge its racism by getting a sympathetic Ugandan character to tell the white dude to go back to the West. Not because he hasn't done horrible things by aiding Amin, but because he's white so people will listen. True enough. But what happens when Whitey returns and makes the story all about his own inner conflict and how he's suffered? He also forgets to mention why all the Brits were there in the first place. Working on their tans?
Plus, his "escape" (the real person ended up in post-Amin jail) is the most absurd thing I have ever seen in a movie. More absurd than Bruce Willis's duct-taped holster in "Die Hard", more absurd than the flying bike in "ET", more absurd than the just-like-chickens scene in "Eraserhead".
In short, this movie made "Blood Diamond" seem complex, subtle and politically right-on. That is not a recommendation for Blood Diamond.
All the cliches were in place. Someplace in Africa is important because it's being seen through white eyes: check. Africans doing strange and wonderful things as seen through the oversaturation of color: yup. Africans doing outrageously cruel and crazy-violent things without remorse: why make a movie about Africa without that? One does not need to be an apologist for Idi Amin to hope for a little more context and history.
I admit I should have known better. I remember some positive review by some reviewer I liked and just put it in the to-see pile in my head. I also thought it was going to be a movie version of a true story, not the dramatization of a story inspired by an interpretation of a reflection of actual events which it turned out to be.
This is important only because while I expect non-fiction accounts to be self-serving, I also expect them to, if only to forestall criticism, be linked to a historical timeline and not make up things that are purely absurd. Not in this film, that's for sure!
Amin is so childlike (or insane) that just because some adventurist white doctor dude puts a splint on his injured wrist, he decides to let him implement policy for the entire post-coup nation. Those African tyrants sure are wacky! The person the book was originally based on at least was someone who Amin had known or known of for years since he was living in Uganda and employed by the English Army. One assumes that person had seen and done some hard things. In the movie the protagonist is some confused almost-hippie, almost do-gooder fresh out of med school who went to Uganda to escape his father issues. I mean Christ, Amin may have been evil but since he managed to rise from rural poverty to leader of a country, at least give him some credit for cunning.
Instead Amin constantly calls for counsel with someone who has the real life experience of an inner-city 8 year old. The movie tries to hedge its racism by getting a sympathetic Ugandan character to tell the white dude to go back to the West. Not because he hasn't done horrible things by aiding Amin, but because he's white so people will listen. True enough. But what happens when Whitey returns and makes the story all about his own inner conflict and how he's suffered? He also forgets to mention why all the Brits were there in the first place. Working on their tans?
Plus, his "escape" (the real person ended up in post-Amin jail) is the most absurd thing I have ever seen in a movie. More absurd than Bruce Willis's duct-taped holster in "Die Hard", more absurd than the flying bike in "ET", more absurd than the just-like-chickens scene in "Eraserhead".
In short, this movie made "Blood Diamond" seem complex, subtle and politically right-on. That is not a recommendation for Blood Diamond.
