Forest Whitaker has his Oscar nomination wrapped up.
As the notorious Ugandan tyrant Idi Amin, his pulsating performance is the driving force behind “The Last King of Scotland.” But in adapting Giles Foden fact-based novel, director Kevin Macdonald and writer Jeremy Brock use a white guy?s perspective to tell an adventure story exploiting black African calamity. It blunts the enormity of Amin?s madness and villainy, that he was responsible for the murder of tens of thousands of his citizens in the 1970s.
The film focuses instead on a thrill-seeking young physician who gets sucked into the exotica and bloody chaos of that continent.
Dr. Nicholas Garrigan (James McAvoy) leaves his native Scotland for exciting experience under the guise of treating the Third World poor. On the bus to his first outpost in the Ugandan outback, he is literally seduced by Africa ? or, at least by a comely African gal. It will be the first of several times that the doc?s loose zipper will lead him off in the wrong direction. He next attempts to bed the remote hospital?s married babe in residence. She?s played by Gillian Anderson, looking especially radiant as a blonde do-gooder here. It?s an odd minor role for the ex-“X-Files” actress, which was apparently cut up in post-production, since the relationship between her and Nicholas is abruptly dropped after the movie?s first act.
That?s when a chance encounter leads Nicholas to meet and treat the rising dictator Idi Amin for a minor injury. Before the audience can scream, “RUN!”, the naïve bloke is being charmed by Amin?s larger-than-life bravado and the trappings of money and power. He becomes the head of state?s personal physician and chief Western witness to the horrors about to happen. Making matters worse, the lothario medical man can?t resist having an affair with his mad boss?s lovely third wife (Kerry Washington). How daft do you have to be?
For anyone with any familiarity with modern history, watching “The Last King of Scotland” is an exercise in impatience and dread. If you know of Amin, you just know the vicious mutilation and murder is coming. But the movie takes so long in finally getting there.
In the meantime, Garrigan gives a sympathetic rendering as the dumb but lovable boob in the eye of the storm. And, as he is slowly revealed by Whitaker, it is understandable how the whole world at the time was fooled by Amin?s twisted charisma. Whitaker captures that as well as the despot?s paranoid cruelty.
What he and “Last King” fail to communicate is where such remorseless inhumanity comes from in a person or why that part of the planet breeds genocide. From Rwanda to Uganda and now to Darfur, it never seems to end.
Rated R for some strong violence and gruesome images, sexual content and language.
