The Last King of Scotland

Posted by Clayton L. White (stinky_booties@hotmail.com) on April 12, 2007

This last year has been really great for Forest Whitaker. His performance in The Shield is one of the greatest in television history, and the same could apply to film for his Oscar winning portrayal of General Idi Amin Dada in The Last King of Scotland. The only problem is that the film isn’t worthy of his performance. The film is sometimes heavy handed, while other times it avoids its subject too much. Whitaker, however, is funny, charming, paradoxical, and ultimately terrifying, making this very flawed film a must see experience.

In 1970, a young Scottish doctor named Nicholas Garrigan (James McAvoy) comes to Uganda to make a difference while having a little adventure. He is extremely naive and politically unaware. When a military coup places Idi Amin in power, Garrigan is caught up in the excitement, but he doesn’t realize the implications. After one of Amin’s rallies, Garrigan is traveling back to his position at a remote clinic when he comes across a bit of a traffic jam. A bull lies in the road, it’s legs broken, while Amin stands outside his car, screaming that his hand is broken. Garrigan is ordered to tend to Amin. As he does this, the bull is noticeably in pain. Unable to focus on fixing Amin’s hand, Garrigan grabs a nearby pistol and puts the bull out of it’s misery. Amin is taken aback at the young man’s nerve, and starts to question him. After finding out Garrigan is Scottish (Amin is obsessed with Scotland), he invites Garrigan to be his personal physician. Garrigan eventually accepts the position and the luxuries that it offers. After living the high life for a while, a turn of events causes Garrigan to realize that he’s in over his head, with no possible way out.

All of this is interesting enough, but former documentary filmmaker Kevin MacDonald (Touching the Void) isn’t able to hang on to what he’s got. His direction is haphazard at best, trying too hard to be stylish, and not providing us with enough of an accurate view of Amin the individual. Garrigan is actually the main character, which is fine, but he is so unlikeable, so unsympathetic that it’s hard to care about his plight. He comes to Uganda to “make a difference,” but he’s shallow enough to believe that caring for Amin eventually helps the entire nation. He makes some very stupid choices that catch up to him in die fashion. I kept waiting for him to wake up and get a grip, but he doesn’t until it’s nearly too late, and by then the audience has lost most of it’s interest. All the while, Amin is painted as a caricature, never really showing us the full extent of the man’s charm that wooed so many, nor do we ever see the furthest reaches of his power. This is a man who would eventually kill at least 300,000 people, and we never really see why. I admire the fact that the story aims for a smaller piece of the pie, but it tries to have it both ways. It tries to be personal while being epic, and in the end it fails on both ends.

The film does have its good sides. Whitaker, as always, burns up the screen. For the last twenty five years, Whitaker has been churning out great performance after great performance, and he has finally gotten his due with this role, and it’s about damn time. McAvoy, however, comes as the biggest surprise. You may know him as Mr. Tumnus in The Chronicles of Narnia, but I have a feeling you’ll be remembering him for much more than that in the near future. He is in nearly every scene of the film, and he easily holds his own against Whitaker. He takes an unlikable character, and makes it memorable by investing his soul into the role. It is this performance that was overlooked by the Academy, and it’s a shame. McAvoy does everything he can to make you buy into the film, make you want to like it, but in the end he can’t change the script that he’s been given, or the director that has been chosen. Gillian Anderson (Scully from The X-Files) does some good supporting work in a very small role, and cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle (28 Days Later, Dogville) makes great use of the African countryside. He excels in giving us the feeling that we are back in this time period, going through these events with Garrigan. He knows what to do with the camera, even when MacDonald might not have a clue.

This is not a bad film. This is a decent film that could have been good. When you have a performer like Whitaker who has been given the role of a lifetime with Idi Amin, you need to cut him loose. He should be free to tear at the screen as much as possible, but in this story he’s pushed into the background. The scenes he shares with McAvoy are dynamite, but the turns in the plot, whether factual or not, are predictable and tiresome. I’m going to recommend the film solely because of it’s acting. I think there are scenes here that should be seen by every aspiring actor, but aspiring directors or screenwriters should definitely look elsewhere. The Last King of Scotland is available on DVD on April 17, 2007.

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