Mobutu, King of Zaire 2 Stars (Out of 4) Reviewed by Mac VerStandig critic@moviereviews.org http://www.moviereviews.org April 7, 2000 Film will play FilmFest DC 2000
---This review can be found at http://www.moviereviews.org/mobutu,_king_of_zaire.htm ---
There has long been a rumor that Mobutu Sese Seko staged random executions of prisoners before 1972's Rumble in the Jungle boxing match between Mohammed Ali and George Foreman. But you won't hear about that in Mobutu, King of Zaire, a two-and-one-quarter hour documentary that seems to select what it includes and what is excludes similarly to how Mobutu supposedly selected the doomed prisoners. What the documentary does reiterate time and again is that Mobutu was a beast – inhuman, amoral and money-hungry. To get this point across, almost all references to the Zairian leader's family are left on the editing room floor (a good director like Thierry Michel couldn't humanize his untamed beast). Still, agenda or not, Michel has picked a fascinating subject. Mobutu united, led and, ultimately, destroyed his people in the name of money and power. At one point, in an old interview, the leader points out the obvious when speaking in the first person: `President Mobutu's fortune is greater than Zaire's debt.' So why was this man capable of leading a country without rebellion for so long? `He had become a god' wisely remarks an interviewee (although the infamous Chinese system of making citizens ask for a different color ballot should they not want to vote for their current leader couldn't have hurt). And that is really the extent of the film: how many awful things this `god' did. Before the end, you will see people hung, people beaten to death and other graphic, haunting images. You will hear of even more, like when the leader apparently drank a glass of human blood in hopes that it would make him more powerful. It gets tired quickly. What doesn't, however, is Larry Delvin, one of the interviewees. The former CIA chief in Zaire, Delvin reveals that the USA had a way of physically terminating reigns of leaders that displeased Washington. Fascinating as the CIA and Mobutu's wrath may be, the anti-Mobutu propaganda rises to a level that takes the piece well beyond most documentaries in terms of a slanted perspective. Perhaps that is where the answer can found: Michel couldn't show America's favorite retired boxer in a film about unadulterated evil, now could he?
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