BEFORE: James McAvoy carries over for his third and final film in this chain, and it's clear that when I draw up the recap for this year, in addition to artists and serial killers, I'll be talking about world leaders and/or politics. In January I watched films about both Queen Elizabeth and Margaret Thatcher, I finally got around to watching "Gandhi", and then a few weeks ago "The Butler" showed a take on all the U.S. Presidents from Eisenhower to Obama, and then I touched on Abe Lincoln earlier this week.
THE PLOT: Based on the events of the brutal Ugandan dictator Idi Amin's regime as seen by his personal physician during the 1970.
AFTER: What's odd for me is that this film doesn't seem to fit in with those other films about world leaders. With the story being told from the point of view of his personal doctor, the film neatly sidesteps the enigma that is Idi Amin - cleverly, we get to see him through a close confidant's eyes, and that person goes through stages of being fascinated by him, charmed by him, and then eventually threatened by him.
But we all see things through our own filters - so naturally I can draw a parallel to my own experiences working for people, and in a roundabout way, that puts this film in close proximity to "The Devil Wears Prada", or perhaps "Swimming with Sharks". Because no matter what field you're working in, whether it's fashion or film, medicine or politics, you could end up working for someone who's a giant in the industry, and you could be similarly fascinated, charmed and then threatened by that person. (Wait, this guy works for an egotistical dictator whose word is law, and he runs things tyrannically with random instructions to his staff? Yeah, I've been there.)
So they took this very specific conundrum - working for a brutal dictator, and they found a way to make it more universal. Maybe you've had a boss, (or a spouse, or an phone service provider) that you were once enamored with, and you'd like to break things off, but you can't, because that person (or phone service provider) is acting psychotically, and that's part of the problem. There's just no good way to follow up, "I'd like to talk to you about how irrationally you've been acting lately..." because that's just going to set that someone off, now, isn't it? Or you're stuck in a job, and you can't look for another job until you quit THIS one, but you can't quit this one, because you don't have another job lined up just yet. What are you going to do for a living, nothing?
So our hero gets in too deep with Amin before he realizes the man's true colors, whether he's bipolar or self-absorbed or just putting the "dick" in "dictator" - he starts to rely on his trusted doctor for advice on matters of state, and that's not the doctor's area of expertise. So he digs his hole even deeper, figuring that he can at least help upgrade the country's medical facilities once he has the president's ear. As long as he doesn't do something stupid like form a bond with one of Amin's wives...
They sort of fictionalized things by making the doctor Scottish - supposedly I guess this leads to a fascination with that country, after which Amin gives himself the title sobriquet. In real life, Amin had erroneously told his people that he had conquered Britain, and therefore earned the title as the King of Scotland, or Conqueror of the British Empire. Having a Scottish character sort of gets us there sooner, I guess. (Apparently there's also a Shakespearean connection as well, the title works if you want to pick up on the connection between Idi Amin and Macbeth.)
Also starring Forest Whitaker (last seen in "The Butler"), Gillian Anderson (last seen in "The X-Files: I Want to Believe"), Kerry Washington (last seen in "Django Unchained"), Simon McBurney (last seen in "Magic in the Moonlight"), David Oyelowo (also last seen in "The Butler")
RATING: 5 out of 10 bodyguards
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