The Last King of Scotland

A big, hulking actor with a lazy eye, Forest Whitaker has always been a very physical actor - when you think of his performances, you think of how he carries himself. The way he seemed to pour himself into the saxophone in Clint Eastwood's Charlie Parker biopic, Bird, for example; or his solitary grace in Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai; or the way he bigs it up to out-hustle Paul Newman in The Color of Money.

In The Last King of Scotland Whitaker plays Idi Amin, the former British army recruit who went on to become the brutal dictator of his native Uganda (with the connivance of the British government, according to Amin). It's another larger than life performance, and rightfully so, because myths buzzed around Amin like moths around a flame. Whitaker plays up his charm and his violence. He's cavalier and grandiose one minute; paranoid and petulant the next. It's clear he's a megalomaniac, though not to his doctor apparently.

James McAvoy - much in demand these days - plays the young Scottish doctor, Nicholas Garrigan, who is plucked from his charity and embraced by the President and installed as his personal physician and close advisor, primarily on the strength of his nationality. (Amin fancied himself a spiritual Scot, and liked to wear a kilt on special occasions.)

This is the first fiction feature by Kevin Macdonald whose documentaries One Day in September and Touching the Void hinted at an appetite for drama. It is 'inspired by real people and actual events', but based on a novel by Giles Foden, and Garrigan himself is a composite. Given his central role in the film, that's where I have some problems with it.

Put simply, I didn't believe Amin would promote such a callow (if outspoken) young man to such an elevated position (he soon becomes his most trusted political advisor), nor that Garrigan could remain so ignorant of the mayhem his mentor was waging on the country. His affair with one of Amin's wives (Kerry Washington) smacks of melodramatic contrivance.

Simon McBurney is memorably slimy as an insidious British diplomat (read: spy), and his scenes with McAvoy have a subtlety the rest of the film lacks, though to be fair, Amin doesn't exactly invite that quality.

The Last King of Scotland is a tense, sometimes uncomfortably lurid thriller about moral corruption in the proximity of evil. Despite my reservations, its fascinating material, bolstered by on-the-spot shooting by Dogma DP Anthony Dod Mantle. Whitaker's bravura performance seems destined to earn him an Oscar nomination for Best Actor, but for all that screen time, this is really a supporting role.

Incidentally, co-writer Peter Morgan also wrote the screenplay for another probable Oscar contender, The Queen. Which makes we wonder if the genuflecting Garrigan and the obsequious Tony Blair might be mirror images of some sort?

Tom Charity

January 08, 2007
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