The Last King of Scotland: Movie & DVD Review (2006)

(Originally published 2006)

The new Kevin Macdonald movie, "The Last King of Scotland," is based on Giles Foden's novel, which was inspired by true events and which certainly took its liberties in telling them. The movie follows suit.

Much like the recent Stephen Frears' movie, "The Queen," a good deal of "Scotland" is speculative, especially its dialogue, which for the most part is hooked to one colorful imagination.

The movie mixes entertaining cutaways and asides with the deepening horror you'd expect from a story focused on the reign of Gen. Idi Amin (Forest Whitaker), the Ugandan dictator who dazzled a nation with his charm before murdering more than 300,000 people during his eight-year tyrannical rule.

From Peter Morgan and Jeremy Block’s script, the film views Amin through the eyes of its white protagonist, a naive Scottish doctor who never existed. His name is Nicholas Garrigan (James McAvoy) and in 1971, fresh from university, he left his life of wealth and privilege for the drama of Uganda.

There, he allegedly was going to sow his wild oats and find himself while helping the poor and the stricken. That's a familiar story to tell--some might say it borders on cliché--with Africa once again being used as the go-to place for the white man’s spiritual awakening and salvation. The good news is that Macdonald, his screenwriters and his cast work hard to tell it well.

Early on, by chance, Nicholas finds himself treating Amin, who warms to Nicholas when he learns he's a Scot and thus likely understands the difficulty of British Imperial oppression, as Amin does. Out of this their unlikely relationship is born, with Nicholas becoming so smitten by Amin’s charisma, he's wooed away from the possibility of a budding affair with Sarah Merrit (Gillian Anderson in a nice career reversal) and moves to the Amin compound to become his personal physician and closest confidant.

Let the sweet life begin, with Nicholas riding a high, comfortable life that gradually dissolves into nightmare as the Amin regime falls apart along with the man himself.

In his Golden Globe-winning performance, Whitaker, who has a lock on an Academy Award nomination and perhaps even the award itself, is the reason to see the movie, which nearly rises to the power of what he achieves here. Assisted by his intimidating bulk, monstrous sneer and bulging right eye, he’s fantastic in the role, initially playing Amin as a genial bear until the dark side of his power and his failure to connect globally begin to consume him with self-doubt, self-destruction and finally a fall into madness.

What Whitaker shows us is a complex portrait of a man whose wide smile and hearty laugh could snap into a murderous rage if provoked. In this respect, he recalls Brando--there is surprise in his step, with a curtain of menace running beneath it. His is one of the fiercest, least predictable performances of 2006, so fully on edge that he becomes the movie's edge.

Grade: B+

(Note: Whitaker won the Academy Award)