Idi Amin film brings back memories for Ugandans

KAMPALA, Feb 19 (Reuters) After months waiting to see the Oscar-nominated film ''The Last King of Scotland'', Ugandans welcomed what they saw as a realistic portrayal of their blood-thirsty former dictator, Idi Amin.

But for an older generation who lived under his rule in the 1970s, it also sparked painful memories of an era they would rather forget.

The film premiered in Kampala late on Saturday, where Hollywood star Forest Whitaker, who plays Amin, was besieged by cameras as he walked down a red carpet to the main movie theatre where President Yoweri Museveni also watched the film.

Whitaker, tipped to win an Oscar for his performance, brings out Amin's complex character -- lurching between being warm and fun-loving to being a sadistic monster, fuelled by paranoia of even his closest aides.

''They really got it right, the way he was so nice then could just turn on you, like Jekyll and Hyde,'' said Fred Masadde, 40, a sales manager, who remembers his primary school friends cheering a jovial Amin in his sports car during a visit.

The film, shot in Uganda, narrates the fictional story of a friendship between the ruthless ruler and a young Scottish doctor Nicholas Garrigan, who is lured by Amin's power then cannot escape as he realises the bloodshed going on around him.

Some 300,000 people were tortured, killed or ''disappeared'' in Amin's police state. Survivors found the film hard to watch.

''I didn't enjoy any part of the film -- it was a sad experience,'' said Frank Mwine, 65, a lawyer whose brother was amongst Amin's earliest victims. ''But it's good for the outside world to know what we went through.'' He said he wanted to cry during the film, but did not. ''It is a shame for a man to cry in public in my culture,'' he said.

''FRANKENSTEIN'S MONSTER'' Though fictional, the film features many real life events.

The audience laughed at Amin's buffoonery, then fell silent as the tyrant came out, such as when Garrigan sees the mutilated body of Amin's fifth wife, Kay.

''That brought it all back for me,'' said John Barigye, a former civil servant under Amin, whose brother was tortured and then had his skull smashed by Amin's henchmen. ''I even knew Kay. She paid me a visit one time, the next week she was gone.'' The film, whose title makes reference to one of the grandiose titles Amin frequently gave himself, shows Uganda's former colonial master Britain supporting his coup then later blackmailing Garrigan to kill Amin when a British diplomat refuses to help the doctor get a passport.

Director Kevin MacDonald, who attended the Kampala premiere along with James McAvoy who plays Garrigan, said the film was supposed to show how Amin, a former soldier in Britain's forces, was a ''Frankenstein's monster created by the British.'' Not everyone agrees.

''The claim that we supported Amin's coup -- it's clearly not true,'' Francois Gordon, British High Commissioner to Uganda, told Reuters. ''That (passport) scene ... is way over the top.'' REUTERS SP KN0842