The Last King of Scotland

Does Forest Whittaker deserve the overwhelming amount of praise and accolades he’s received for his portrayal of Idi Amin, Uganda’s notorious dictator? The answer is a resounding yes. He’s played so many engaging characters throughout the years, in films as diverse as Bird and The Crying Game, that the decision to cast him as such a reprehensible historical figure is ingenious. Whittaker oozes enough charisma and exuberance to make any audience member a believer of his character’s lofty ideals. It’s the same charming persona Amin flaunted at the press during the 1970’s, which would later be exposed as a deadly façade. The humor and passion Whittaker breathes into his role makes Amin’s homicidal nature all the more horrific. He succeeds in embodying a man as ambiguous and complex as he is monstrously infantile. He delivers an unforgettable performance worthy of all awards, including the inevitable Oscar. He deserves to be in a better movie than The Last King of Scotland.

Director Kevin McDonald, the man behind excellent documentaries like One Day in September and Touching the Void, has crafted a disappointingly conventional drama that squeezes a monumental real-life tragedy into a superficial Hollywood formula. Think Devil Wears Prada meets Turistas. This is apparent right from the film’s opening moments, which introduce us to Scottish medical school grad Nicholas Garrigan, played by James McAvoy. Nick is anxious to get out of the house. He decides to choose his travel destination by spinning a globe, running his finger against it, and seeing where it stops. What a coincidence—it lands on Uganda! This painfully lame sequence propels Garrigan into work at a remote Ugandan village where eighty percent of the locals prefer witch doctors. After failing to seduce a physician’s wife—a wasted Gillian Anderson—Garrigan encounters the larger-than-life Amin at a back-country rally. Through a series of developments too improbable to describe, Amin hires Garrigan as his personal physician, thereby cementing an initially friendly bond that can only lead to destructive consequences.

Although Last King is indeed based on Giles Foden’s book, it nevertheless follows a troubling storytelling tradition set by previous American films, most of which directed by Ed Zwick. These films intend to raise awareness on a vital issue by using a white lead character as the mainstream audience’s guide through an inherently foreign—and usually African—story. There was Patricia Arquette in Beyond Rangoon, Matthew Broderick in Glory, Tom Cruise in The Last Samurai, Leonardo DiCaprio in Blood Diamond, and now McAvoy in this film. Yes, McAvoy turns in solid work, but the presence of his composite character within such a flesh-and-blood setting is simply distracting. Garrigan’s sole function is to mirror the amused/stunned/disgusted reaction of the viewer. His observations about Amin, such as, “You’re a child. That’s what makes you so fucking scary!” are redundant, since Whittaker’s multi-layered performance had already communicated that fact clear enough. Though Garrigan’s relationship with Amin has intriguing shades, especially when he fears of being complicit in Amin’s crimes, his utter lack of credibility diffuses any such dramatic complexity. Garrigan especially tests the limits of plausibility when he decides to have an ill-advised affair with one of Amin’s wives, played by Kerry Washington.

Yes, the film works as straightforward entertainment, a label that squanders its chance at being so much more. Any viewer who knows Amin won’t buy the upbeat first half, which plays somewhat like an edgy comedy of manners. Anthony Dod Mantle’s cinematography looks like a grainy Vietnam-era newsreel crossed with a spastic music video. There are times when the film threatens to become a sped-up version of the opening montage from Apocalypse Now, and the comparisons between both films don’t stop there. Amin is undoubtedly the film’s Col. Kurtz, stealthily pulling Garrigan into his gory heart of darkness. Yet unlike Martin Sheen in Apocalypse, McAvoy possesses neither the depth nor self-reflection to state anything more profound than “I wanna go home.”

The film’s epilogue notes that Amin was responsible for 300,000 deaths, as images of the now-deceased leader are seen smiling in the background. Such a statistic bears the question, who really is Amin, and why didn’t the filmmakers have the guts to simply tell his story? It certainly packs more real drama than any number of angst-filled Scottish kids. The Last King of Scotland’s greatest casualty is Whittaker himself, whose career-best performance is reduced to a supporting role smaller than that of Djimon Hounsou in Blood Diamond, whose performance snagged an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. That Whittaker may very well win the Best Actor Oscar is not only a testament to his brilliant work, but to the man this film should have truly been about in the first place.

Rating: **1/2 (out of *****)