THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND Reviewed by Harvey S. Karten
Fox Searchlight Pictures
Grade: A-
Directed by: Kevin Macdonald
Written By: Peter Morgan & Jeremy Brock, novel by Giles Foden
Cast: Forest Whitaker, James MacAvoy, Kerry Washington,
Simon McBurney, Gillian Anderson
Screened at: Fox, NYC, 9/14/06
Opens: September 27, 2006 Wars come and go, but everyone knows that we’ll never have a nuclear holocaust in the 21st century. Why? Because rulers are aware that any attempt to use nukes will result in immediate retaliation that will destroy their own country as well as that of their enemy. Ah, but wait. We’re assuming all presidents, kings and prime ministers are rational. Bad assumption. Iran’s president wants to blow Israel off the map, North Korea threatens to nuke the south, India and Pakistan had disputes that could have led to a thermonuclear reaction. Beware of any head of state who, as one doctor puts it in Kevin Macdonald’s fascinating, partly fictionalized journey into the heart of darkness, has the mind of a child. That’s what makes him dangerous. Idi Amin was a childlike head of state. A large man, he took power in Uganda when loyalists in the army threw out Milton Obote, who was leaning toward communism. So far, so good. As portrayed in this film, he is charismatic. When he gets up to speak to a crowd of villagers, he appeals to their emotions. The masses are already familiar with Amin’s background as a child of poverty, just like them. When he promises roads, schools and hospitals and complete independence from the former colonial ruler, Britain, they cheer wildly. If he had said, “fresh fish,” they’d have cheered as raucously. He could have read the phone book to them and have them in the palm of his large hand. That explains the influence Amin wields over a naive (and fictionalized) young doctor who left his native Scotland right after graduating from medical school with the idea of using his skills where they were needed most (he rejected Canada) and where he could have the adventure of his life. There you have the picture. Scripted from Giles Foden’s best-selling, award-winning novel by Peter Morgan and Jeremy Brock, “The Last King of Scotland” (one of the titles that Idi Amin conferred upon himself, thinking that he would liberate Scotland from the English) puts the complexity of human beings under the microscope, showing that both Amin and his personal, white physician are neither all evil or all saintly. It helps quite a bit that the role of Idi Amin is played by Forest Whitaker, who delivers not only his most magnetic performance but one which Wall Street Journal critic Joe Morgenstern called one of the great performances in modern cinema history. Outstanding as a British soldier in “The Crying Game” and less dramatically so as a prison guard in “Last Light,” the Texas-born forty-five year old Whitaker can play gentle, clumsy, and paranoid with equal aplomb, as he does now. Kevin Macdonald, whose first movie, “One Day in September,” examined the terrorist incident at the Munich Olympics in which Israeli athletes were taken hostage, was the wise choice to helm this pic, one which at one point involves the African ruler’s hosting hostages from a hijacked Air France plane at Entebbe airport. Whitaker plays the dictator as a man who could probably be labeled clinically insane. Like serial killers such as Ted Bundy, he could be thoroughly charming, then do a volte force, becoming enraged enough to commit great evil. The story begins in cold and dreary Scotland, as the parents of Nicholas Garrigan (James McAvoy) congratulate their son for attaining his medical degree, then cuts to Uganda to impress us with the contrast–an African country (filmed on location) bathed in sunshine, bright colors and gaiety. When Garrigan, involved in treating villagers, or at least those who do not put all their trust in witch doctors, patches up Amin’s hand after the dictator crashes his Maserati, Amin is impressed, hires him as personal physician, and even names him his chief adviser–pleased, it seems, that the young doctor is from Scotland. Like the court jester, Garrigan is able to get away with telling Amin the truth, criticizing his treatment of one of his own children, an epileptic, then lashing out at Amin’s brutality toward his enemies. We watch medical ethics go down the drain, as the young medic chucks his ambition to deal with ordinary villagers–and the chance to indulge in affair with an older doctor’s wife (Gillian Anderson)–to enjoy the trappings of power. As Amin’s rivals go “missing,” Nicholas is warned about the dictator by one of the man’s own wives, who then seduces–or is seduced by–Garrigan. Bad mistake. But Garrigan makes a crucial error in advising Amin that one of his most trusted cabinet officials may be plotting to overthrow the government–when in fact the minister was negotiating for shipments of penicillin into the country. The minister goes “missing.” Though the picture travels often into broad melodrama, the action keeps the pace moving swiftly. Still, the real value, the reason for putting this movie on top of everyone’s must-see list, is Whitaker’s larger-than-life, multifaceted performance. He is so charming that you wonder how you can like a fellow who was responsible for the deaths of 300,000 of his countrymen. Rated R. 121 minutes 2006 by Harvey Karten
harveycritic@cs.com Member: NY Film Critics Online | 
