We first see Amin from behind as he addresses a cheering crowd, promising them a new national identity and a new prosperity. His shoulders and neck suggest physical power. Then Macdonald cuts to an extreme close-up of Amin in full flood, his eyes blazing, his nostrils flaring, his forceful rhetoric igniting the crowd, the impressionable Nicholas among them. He does not, however, impress Sarah (Gillian Anderson), the wife of the mission doctor Nicholas has come to work for, but then she has lived through the Obote regime and is in touch with reality.
After being called to attend Amin after a minor injury in a road accident, and impressing him with his coolness, Nicholas deserts the supposedly humane purpose that has brought him to Africa and becomes the general's personal physician and adviser. He is seduced by smart clothes, limos, a Mercedes convertible of his own, a house, access to women and booze and an authority that would take him half a lifetime to achieve in Scotland.
There is, too, an odd bond between him and Amin. The general, while fighting the Mau-Mau in Kenya as a corporal in the King's African Rifles, served with a Scottish regiment and adores Scotland. The naive Nicholas, as part of his half-baked 1970s rebelliousness, has embraced Scottish nationalism and developed a hatred for the duplicitous English. This comes to focus on the local British diplomats who have helped elevate Amin and now attempt to enlist Nicholas to spy on him.
The events of five or six years are compressed as we see Amin become increasingly brutal, paranoid and arbitrary, his mood changes ever more menacing. Meanwhile, Nicholas continues to turn a blind eye to the obscenity of what goes on around him, looking for explanations, excuses and justifications, until finally you cannot see the general's feet of clay for the blood covering them. This borders on, but never quite crosses over into, the implausible. People, nations indeed, can behave like this — think of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher and former Chilean president Pinochet; George Galloway and Saddam Hussein; the French and Bokassa; Russia and nearly everyone.
The movie alludes to the larger historical and tribal contexts that helped create Amin, without going into much detail. But the troubled friendship of Nicholas and the general illuminates the complex relation ship between the old imperial powers and their former colonies. It features a truly great performance from Whitaker. He captures that sense of the vicious, devious Iago inhabiting the body of the bluff, charismatic Othello that has made Amin the object of such peculiar, horrified fascination.
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