Strong Acting Rescues The Last King of Scotland Posted by: Joe Tracy, Publisher

The Last King of Scotland is a good movie with a bit of everything… drama, betrayal, politics, loyalty, great acting, and lies. The only thing missing from the movie is truth, especially when the film opens with the words “inspired by real people and real events.” About the only three things that are real are that the Uganda president was a real person, Uganda is a real country, and a lot of people died. Beyond that, the movie is almost pure fiction, including the lead character, Dr. Nicholas Garrigan (played by James McAvoy), who never existed in real life.

In The Last King of Scotland, Dr. Garrigan leaves Scotland after his graduation (for reasons never fully explained) and goes to Uganda after closing his eyes, spinning a globe and placing his finger at a point…Uganda (luckily his finger didn’t land in the middle of the ocean). From there he has a chance meeting with the new Uganda president, Idi Amin, and the two form a near immediate bond with each other, leading to Dr. Garrigan becoming Amin’s personal doctor and “closest adviser”.

What’s really incredible about The Last King of Scotland is the outstanding and totally convincing performance of Forest Whitaker as Amin. His Oscar winning performance (Best Actor) perfectly captures the charm, allure, ruthlessness, and paranoia of the Uganda leader, who came to power through a coop, and constantly fears that he may now be betrayed.

The acting of Whitaker keeps you immersed in the movie as you keep finding yourself torn between liking Amin (because of his charm) and hating him (because of his brutal nature and paranoia). His ability to make you like his character one second, hate it the next, empathize with it the next, like him again, then want someone’s attempt against his life to succeed, is simply masterful. The ability to pull emotions in so many directions just from one character is not an easy accomplishment for a Hollywood actor to pull off. But Whitaker nails it.

The Last King of Scotland does have some problems when it comes to editing. Some scenes come across as extremely bizarre in the way they are edited, particularly when one of Amin’s wives is dealt with for having an affair. The quick-paced, choppy, and hard to follow editing of this scene makes you wonder if the crew forgot to film something and tried to bandage the story together by editing what they did have. That didn’t happen, of course, but the filmmakers could have done a much better job in consistency of editing to keep you immersed in the story versus pulling you out of it.

Howie Movshovitz, who reviewed The Last King of Scotland for The Hollywood Reporter, brings to light another problem with the movie that I completely agree with. He says (his reference to Macdonald is director Kevin Macdonald):

“But the core of the film presents problems. Macdonald, working from a novel by Giles Foden, falls into the trap that claims too many white filmmakers who want to film other kinds of people. The movie tries to bring home the horror of Amin's regime by showing the trials of a white character. All over Uganda, Amin's henchmen are murdering his often-imagined enemies, mostly black people, including Garrigan's friends and lover. But the character whose pain matters most to the movie is Garrigan's. It puts the film out of balance.”

Even so, The Last King of Scotland is a worthy movie to watch purely because of the incredible performance of Whitaker. That alone is worth the price of admission, whether in a theater or at your local Blockbuster.