Historical Accuracy
While the character of Idi Amin and the events surrounding him in the movie are mostly factual, Garrigan is a fictional character. His story is loosely based on events in the life of English-born Bob Astles. Like the novel on which it is based, the film mixes fiction with real events in Ugandan history to give an impression of Amin and Uganda under his authoritarian rule. While the basic events of Amin's life are followed, the film often departs from actual history in the details of particular events.
In real life and in the book, Kay Amin was impregnated by her lover Dr. Mbalu Mukasa. She died during a botched abortion operation by Mukasa, who subsequently committed suicide. Bob Astles believed that her body was mutilated not on Amin's orders, but by Mukasa while attempting to hide it. Amin never had a son named Campbell.
Contrary to the wording of the film's coda, three hostages died during Operation Entebbe. The body of a fourth hostage, 75-year-old Dora Bloch, who was killed by Ugandan Army officers at a nearby hospital in retaliation for Israel's actions, was eventually returned to Israel.
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Famous quotes containing the words historical and/or accuracy:
“This seems a long while ago, and yet it happened since Milton wrote his Paradise Lost. But its antiquity is not the less great for that, for we do not regulate our historical time by the English standard, nor did the English by the Roman, nor the Roman by the Greek.... From this September afternoon, and from between these now cultivated shores, those times seemed more remote than the dark ages.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The child who has been taught to make an accurate elevation, plan, and section of a pint pot has had an admirable training in accuracy of eye and hand.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)