The Last King of Scotland

After watching The Last King of Scotland, I was impressed to see a leader in power of a million of citizen, who has no background or even a great education to begin with. This movie is based on a true events the leader of Uganda Idi Amin and his personal physician Nicholas Garrigan. I already knew Idi Amin but I did not know as much information about him as I do now. All I knew about him, that he was a loathed figure of the 20th century, who begins butchering everyone in sight, because of his greed to the thrown and power. This movie The Last King of Scotland does a great job in revealing how jovial, bigotry, and buoyant Amin was. Even those in the begin he was seen as a charismatic and magnetic person who is done to earth with his follower citizen when he is public speaking, charming and hypnotizing the citizen of Uganda with his words. That he is equally loving and charming but truly he is murderous and cruel and that is what this film is so masterful at revealing.
Amin Public Speaking.
The Last King of Scotland begins not in Uganda, but in Scotland. There, Nicholas Garrigan graduates from medical school and prepares to settle down to a dull, bland medical practice with his doctor father. We’re only given one scene with Garrigan senior but it is enough to justify the younger’s frustrated scream out loud later when contemplating his fate. Instead, the fool-hearty Garrigan comes up with a fool-proof plan: spin a globe and wherever his finger first falls, that’s where he’ll go.
Canada.
Not quite wild enough for Garrigan’s tastes. Spin again.
Uganda. So be it.
And that when Idi Amin story begins, Garrigan is introduced to General Idi Amin, a military general who has just disposed of the corrupt and inept administration in which he formerly served. Fascinated by the young European, Amin shows him the presidential palace, wines and dines him, lavishes him with gifts and begs him to become his personal physician. When Garrigan half protests that he came to Africa to treat its hurting people, Amin tells him that if Uganda’s population is the body, he is the head — how better to serve Uganda than to ensure the head is healthy.
At first everything is perfect. Garrigan spends most of his time as a playboy, only rarely consulting at the city’s main hospital. His visits to Amin are frequent but more often for cocktails than complaints. However, the more time he spends around Amin, the more he comes to realize that all is not as it seems. After an assassination attempt on Amin’s life that Garrigan is witness to, the true character of his benefactor’s loathsome and murderous nature is revealed.
Garrigan and Amin 3rd wife
“He’s always been like this,” Amin’s neglected third wife and Garrigan’s secret lover, tells him. “He simply chose not to show you until now.” I was honestly shocked by what his third wife has said. Every person has a hidden side of them, but to be compared to Idi’s Amin hidden side, this person is a puppet master who plays with people on the strings. And not only that European men who pulled the strings in order to hand Amin the throne, it was only a quest for Britain’s self interested, they have truly prominent a mad man, to care of thousand of Citizen who need help in developing.
After watching the film I thought it was a well made movie, with a cautionary tale on the terrible dangers of self absorptions and self centered who a person come to greedy of power. But a friend of mine brought up a disturbing question: To what extended are we as the Western world willing to help those who are less unfortunate because of the idiocy of the Government.