THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND

Director: Kevin McDonald (Touching the Void)
Starring: Forest Whitaker, James McAvoy, Kerry Washington

Idi Amin was a wacko. For some reason I can't quite figure out dictators often seem to be completely nuts. I'd expect that someone who's managed to enslave their entire country would be a calculating tough guy, a General Franco or some such, but no, it seems reality is quite the opposite. Many dictators are completely off the wall, professional-wrestling-weird flakes. See Kim Jung Il and his 'golf records', or Niyazov's portraits around Turkmenistan, or Mobutu Sese Seko's funny hats as examples. Idi Amin beat all of these guys though. He was the silliest and most ebullient. Yes, he was the most entertaining of mass murderers.

Forest Whitaker does an excellent job of bringing this most idiosyncratic of men to life. His Amin is both boisterous and compelling, and horrible and obscene. He very much manages to make us care for the man. That must be tough given the distaste we feel for his barbaric actions. Whitaker will get an Oscar nomination for this role, I have little doubt.

The film itself, beyond Whitakers contribution, is fairly pedestrian. It doesn't reach very high, and makes a number of mistakes. Despite these, the film remains interesting and engaging, and with the wonderful Whitaker performance actually rates as a good, enjoyable film. Yes that's right, this story of a barbaric dictator is actually "enjoyable". It's gross in parts (which was one of the movie's mistakes), but it rarely feels like a 'downer' story. In fact, it's often cheery and cheeky.

The story doesn't trust us westerners to understand the Ugandan people, or Amin, so it gives us a Scottish doctor (McAvoy) as our surrogate in the film. We get to see Amin through the eyes of a young, foolish English speaker. (How lucky for us!) I have no idea if this man existed or if he was just a story device. It's probably unimportant either way.

The doctor becomes Amin's personal physician, and eventually, closest advisor. In addition to being proxy for the audience, the doctor also serves as a nice little metaphor for how the west viewed Amin. At first in the media he was simply a foolish, fun and (relatively) harmless ruler of small African country. Eventually his whims, miscalculations and fantasy get the better of him and we see the darker side, that he is a barbarian acting on impulse. As the movie clearly shows (actually, as the doctor character literally tells us) Amin is a child. This is terrifying. A child with any kind of power is terrifying. Most every murderer, and selfish individual is in some sense a child. Children are not to be trusted. At least not with guns or armies.

At times this film played like a schlock horror movie, at others like a cheesy thriller. Luckily these were well interspersed with better scenes and with Whitaker's fine performance. It was usually interesting and entertaining, even important in some ways; a quality film.

Standouts: Forest Whitaker's best performance, an Oscar-worthy Idi Amin.
Blowouts: A few silly, gory scenes, and a weirdly tacked-on love affair.

Grade: B+