The Last King of Scotland

Rating:	★★★★
Category:	Movies
Genre:	Drama

As a child, I first heard of Idi Amin over the news. He was supposedly an African president who eliminated his enemies and (rumor had it) ate them afterwards. It is a frightening thought and over the years, I learned that Amin was indeed a monster who ruled Uganda with an iron fist. I was thus a bit surprised when I heard that Forest Whitaker signed on to play Amin in “The Last King of Scotland”. Whitaker, the lazy-eyed, hulking actor who mainly played character roles, was finally thrust into the lead for this film. Boy, did he run with it.

Dr. Nicholas Garrigan (James McAvoy) is a Scottish doctor who wants to explore the world. On a whim, he flies to Uganda and works for a small hospital. At around this time, Gen. Idi Amin (Forest Whitaker) overthrows the former Ugandan president and seizes power. When their paths cross, Amin is impressed by Garrigan’s brashness and honesty, thus hiring the doctor to be his personal physician. Initially turning a blind eye to the growing paranoia and moral corruption of Amin’s regime, Nicholas is forced to finally see the man as the monster that he is. He tries to escape the country, but Amin won’t let him go so easily.

It is easy to see how Forest Whitaker won all the top acting awards for this film. Immersing himself into the role of Amin, Whitaker supposedly researched the part heavily, even learning Swahili and the East African accent for the movie. Darkening his complexion a bit, Whitaker uses his 6-2 frame to the fullest, portraying Amin with all the charisma and murderous madness that the dictator truly possessed. After all, this was a man who was loony enough to dub himself “His Excellency President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Sea, and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular" and “King of Scotland” (hence the film’s title). McAvoy was also brilliant as Garrigan. A hedonist who goes to Africa just to get away from his father’s shadow, McAvoy plays the everyman who gets caught up in Amin’s magnetism and dragged into the moral decay of his Uganda.

Director Kevin McDonald made every effort to shoot “Last King” in Amin’s actual homeland, lending a lot of credibility to this fictional account. Seeing Uganda, even set in the 1970s brought home the message that a madman can rise to a position of power and even have people cheer him for it. The director shows the dichotomy of Uganda: a poor African nation that still has people consulting witch doctors, yet trying to be progressive and join the wealthier countries of the world. Dropping Amin into the middle of this was like placing a timebomb in front of a crowded plaza.

Though fictional, “The Last King of Scotland” also mixes a lot of actual events. Garrigan is supposedly a hybrid of several people, yet his character succeeds in giving us, the audience, a clear view into what could make Amin so charming yet sickening as well. A combination of great actors combined with a good story and startling cinematography help ground the film as more “real” than any discourse on Amin and Uganda that hasn’t been aired on the Discovery Channel.

The atrocities that Amin committed were many, accounts of the death toll he inflicted number at approximately 500,000. Like a real life Hannibal Lecter or Lex Luthor, Amin didn’t care what other people thought outside his immediate circle. In his mind, he was always right, damn everybody who didn’t think so. For a monster like that to have actually existed, and for him to actually rule a nation for nine years is a scary thought indeed. Whitaker himself admits that his devotion to detail had him eating, sleeping, and dreaming as Amin even after filming wrapped. He clearly deserved the Oscar for Best Actor in this role. Lucky for him and for us, the monster that was Idi Amin died in exile in Saudi Arabia in 2003.