The Last King of Scotland is an intense political thriller that brings to life the mythical figure of 1970s Ugandan dictator Idi Amin.
Forest Whitaker's performance as Amin mesmerizes. He extracts every necessary emotion from his audience - joy, laughter, empathy, sorrow, terror - often all at once. The viewer does not know whether to love or hate a man said to have eaten the flesh of his enemies.
Whitaker's co-star, James McAvoy, portrays Nicholas Garrigan, a white Scottish doctor who goes to a small Ugandan village on a medical mission. Once he and Amin cross paths, he finds himself charmed by the captivating Ugandan and lured into becoming Amin's personal physician and his closest advisor. The recent med school graduate is thrust into a position of power he could never imagine, and he wrestles between maintaining his newfound loyalty to Amin and going back home to Scotland before it is too late. Eventually he finds himself impregnating one of Amin's three wives, and his only chance for escape is to murder the man he both loves and fears and flee the country.
The movie contains beautiful, vivid images of Uganda and paints an accurate picture of the tense political climate of the 1970s, including Amin's involvement in the infamous Palestinian hijacking of a French airliner and the plane's emergency landing in Uganda.
The film, one of the year's best so far, is superbly acted and well-cast. Whitaker deserves an Oscar nod for his gut-wrenching depiction of the man who murdered more than 300,000 of his countrymen while still maintaining favor within the global community. It's a powerhouse portrayal of a worthy subject.
