The Last King of Scotland 2006
It is hard to get psyched up for a movie about the brutal African dictator of Uganda, Idi Amin. So I never saw this widely acclaimed movie when it came out, but I wanted to see it and got the DVD from Netflix. Although Forest Whitaker won the Best Actor Oscar for his performance, the main character is the fictional Dr. Garrigan played by James McAvoy. The focus of the movie is certainly Idi Amin and Whitaker is fantastic, full of charm and humor one minute, and angry and menacing the next. The most brutal aspects of Amin’s rule are avoided, so this isn’t quite as depressing as something like Hotel Rwanda. Instead the focus is on Dr. Garrigan, a young Scot who randomly picks Uganda as a place to do some good and find some adventure. He accidentally meets up with Amin soon after Amin has taken over the country and becomes Amin's personal doctor. Garrigan is impressed with Amin standing up to colonial powers and his speeches about being in office for the common man. His poor character judgement and Amin’s decline into paranoia make Garrigan’s adventure become a nightmare. Soon we are frightened of Amin, but Garrigan also makes some very bad choices that make us not like him either, nothwithstanding the setting in the morally ambiguous 70’s.
Other than not particularly liking the main characters, and having no idea how much of this is realistic given that it is fictional, the writing is very good and Whitaker is great to watch. Another character in the movie is Uganda itself. We see an African country struggling to modernize, with a modern capital city, but whose promising economic future is undermined by the corrupt leadership. The classic story of Africa. That isn’t the focus of the movie by any means, but as a former Peace Corps Volunteer, I enjoyed seeing that part of it. So while the movie misses getting an A from me, it is still definitely worth watching. B+.
Written: 09 Aug 2009