Starring: Forest Whitaker, James McAvoy, Gillian Anderson, Kerry Washington
Director: Kevin Macdonald
The film: Inevitably, it's Forest Whitaker's menacing turn as Ugandan tyrant Idi Amin Dada that looms large over Kevin Macdonald's feature film debut.
It's a breathtaking performance and that the American actor deserve all the plaudits he's received since the film premiered at last year's Toronto Film Festival. A mix of megalomania and pathological paranoia, and flitting between a monstrous brutality and a charm that disarmed Ugandan farmers and foreign journalists alike, Whitaker is spot-on in his portrayal of the contradictory elements that characterised one of the most disturbingly intriguing politicians of the 20th century.
However, The Last King of Scotland is much more than a showcase of Whitaker's fine acting skills; his Amin doesn't appear until nearly 10 minutes into the film. Just as dictated by the film's source - the novel of the same name by Giles Foden, who has a cameo as one of the reporters who fell under Amin's spell - The Last King of Scotland has as its protagonist an unscrupulous white man whose desire for adventure in an exotic land turns into a howling nightmare.
Amin's rule of terror is seen through the eyes of the fictional Nicholas Garrigan (James McAvoy below with Whitaker), a young doctor drawn into the dictator's bosom, charmed and lured into becoming one of Amin's yes-men. While it could be argued that this is another in a long line of films that seeks to explore African history through a white lead, The Last King of Scotland stands out by casting the interloper as not the righteous hero who would inevitably save Africans from themselves, but as a confused cynic who yields to the corruption of his own lofty ideals in the face of desire and danger.