1971. Young, recently graduated Scottish doctor Nicholas Garrigan (McAvoy) travels to Uganda to help out at a local village. After a chance encounter, he becomes the trusted confidant to the nation’s most notorious dictator, Idi Amin (Whitaker).
That wacky Idi Amin: like any jolly tyrant, the infamous Ugandan warlord enjoyed a good practical joke, a cute Disney comic, and dressing up like a cowboy to lasso official patsies and regale the party with his accordion stylings. At the height of his magnificent delusion and paranoia, Amin proclaimed himself the “Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Sea, and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular.” He wasn’t kidding: some estimates claim that as many as 500,000 of his people were butchered during his reign in the 1970s.
Sensationally portrayed by Forest Whitaker in Kevin Macdonald’s semi-fictionalised biopic, this Idi Amin is unexpectedly hilarious, a lovable buffoon and suspected cannibal who’s charming enough to wish his dinner guests bon appétit with the cheerful disclaimer, “None of it is human flesh.” Benny Hill-style “Amin” and “Amout” trays on the desk at his Bond supervillain compound surely couldn’t be far off.
Whitaker’s humanising of a dictator often played as demonic is effective, because the humour of his character only heightens the terrifying fallout when he flips. These switches – from avuncular jester to suspicious, violent monster, his eyes at once kindly and murderous – occur in sudden and random ways, and Whitaker conveys the transition so convincingly that it’s easy to forget the hulking, gentle actor behind the creation. His Amin might appreciate a flatulence gag, but he’s also not afraid to slaughter a betrayer in cold, gruesome blood before retiring to his living room for a viewing of Deep Throat.
McAvoy, whose Garrigan, an amalgamation of Amin’s real-life foreign advisors, is derided as the leader’s “white monkey”, makes a good straight man. Garrigan’s own father issues allow him to be sucked into the surrogate orbit of Amin, a pater familias he then dangerously crosses in a moment of Oedipal jungle fever. McAvoy runs him from feckless to complex, as Garrigan realises his perceptions of tribal life and callous colonials are far too simplistic.
The cunning expedience of the British is nailed in McBurney’s incredibly slimy performance as a deformed dealmaker who initially praises Amin. “He’s a little unpredictable but he’s got a firm hand,” he tells Garrigan, “the only thing these Africans understand.” Amin bristles at foolish whites who imagine his country as an “exotic” playground; later, a doomed Ugandan implores Garrigan: “Tell the truth about Amin – you’re a white man, they will believe you.” In similar ways, the film is never an indictment of a singular evil.
Filmed in torrid, near vérité style by Scottish director Macdonald – making his foray into feature fiction after the 2003 documentary Touching The Void – the picture is infused with an energy that makes it feel as though it’s been stitched together from fragments of newsreel; the rhythm is frantic, the texture absorbing. Yet Macdonald offsets his rapid cuts, close-up body pans and shaky hand-held camera with surprising touches – low cinematic angles, arch irony (Amin’s men torture their captive in the garish hell of a duty free store) and dry surrealism, memorably in a reveal of Amin looming beside a scale model of the city. Destroy all monsters, indeed.
Sensationally portrayed by Forest Whitaker in Kevin Macdonald’s semi-fictionalised biopic, this Idi Amin is unexpectedly hilarious, a lovable buffoon and suspected cannibal who’s charming enough to wish his dinner guests bon appétit with the cheerful disclaimer, “None of it is human flesh.” Benny Hill-style “Amin” and “Amout” trays on the desk at his Bond supervillain compound surely couldn’t be far off.
Whitaker’s humanising of a dictator often played as demonic is effective, because the humour of his character only heightens the terrifying fallout when he flips. These switches – from avuncular jester to suspicious, violent monster, his eyes at once kindly and murderous – occur in sudden and random ways, and Whitaker conveys the transition so convincingly that it’s easy to forget the hulking, gentle actor behind the creation. His Amin might appreciate a flatulence gag, but he’s also not afraid to slaughter a betrayer in cold, gruesome blood before retiring to his living room for a viewing of Deep Throat.
McAvoy, whose Garrigan, an amalgamation of Amin’s real-life foreign advisors, is derided as the leader’s “white monkey”, makes a good straight man. Garrigan’s own father issues allow him to be sucked into the surrogate orbit of Amin, a pater familias he then dangerously crosses in a moment of Oedipal jungle fever. McAvoy runs him from feckless to complex, as Garrigan realises his perceptions of tribal life and callous colonials are far too simplistic.
The cunning expedience of the British is nailed in McBurney’s incredibly slimy performance as a deformed dealmaker who initially praises Amin. “He’s a little unpredictable but he’s got a firm hand,” he tells Garrigan, “the only thing these Africans understand.” Amin bristles at foolish whites who imagine his country as an “exotic” playground; later, a doomed Ugandan implores Garrigan: “Tell the truth about Amin – you’re a white man, they will believe you.” In similar ways, the film is never an indictment of a singular evil.
Filmed in torrid, near vérité style by Scottish director Macdonald – making his foray into feature fiction after the 2003 documentary Touching The Void – the picture is infused with an energy that makes it feel as though it’s been stitched together from fragments of newsreel; the rhythm is frantic, the texture absorbing. Yet Macdonald offsets his rapid cuts, close-up body pans and shaky hand-held camera with surprising touches – low cinematic angles, arch irony (Amin’s men torture their captive in the garish hell of a duty free store) and dry surrealism, memorably in a reveal of Amin looming beside a scale model of the city. Destroy all monsters, indeed.
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