Sunday, January 28, 2007

22 Days

I know it has been a while since my last movie review. I was planning on getting in a movie while in Platteville, but the Platteville 5 movie complex didn't have a single movie that did anything for me. And I am not all that thrilled with the current selection of the Woodbury 10. Yesterday I made my way over to the Inver Grove Showplace 16. I went to see The Last King of Scotland. I thought it was a good movie. Based on the mild research I have done, it appears to be highly historically accurate on the brutality and ruthlessness of the dictatorship of Ugandan leader Idi Amin. While the plot of the movie involving Nicholas Garrigan, is fictitious, the depiction of this characters interaction with Amin, may very well have been true to life of anyone who could have had such proximity to Amin during his regime. Forrest Whitaker is up for an Oscar and has also received a Golden Globe for his performance. This acclaim is part of the reason I wanted to see this movie. In short, the movie is about a young, very naive Scottish doctor, Nicholas Garrigan, who in my opinion makes some extremely poor decisions. Garrigan goes to Uganda to serve as a doctor and after a chance meeting with the dictator is quickly persuaded by the charismatic dictator to become his personal physician. At first being an advisor to Amin was everything that young Garrigan could ask for, however events quickly unfold to change everything. Garrigan is introduced to the horror that is Idi Amin and must deal with the consequences of his poor judgment. Walking out of the movie, I felt a bit stupid for my lack of knowledge of Amin. A dictator whose savagery and murderous path rivals that of Hitler. While I wasn't too wild about the decisions that Garrigan made, yet I do understand them for the stories sake, I will still give this movie a 7.

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