The escaping doctor and the paranoid president

Rating: 8/10 (26 February 2007)

'The Last King of Scotland' is no way a perfect movie, but it is a great movie none the less. After a rather typical beginning for a movie, that is based on a rather generic beginning of a young white man going somewhere out of a whim, the movie really kicks in a high gear. The gear is, when Forest Whitaker is seen in his first big scene as Idi Amin, charismatic, yet paranoid dictator of Uganda.
So this young man, doctor Nicholas Garrigan (brilliantly portrayed by James McAvoy), is trying to escape his life as a future family doctor and thus by an act of faith ends up in a hospital in Uganda. There he has a crush on the local doctors wife Sarah (Gillian Anderson) and so he decides, when the opportunity calls, to enter in the position of Amin's personal doctor. Troubles soon enter his life in the form of Amin's beautiful wife Kay (Kerry Washington).
From what I first thought seemed to be a rather typical historic drama, I was surprised of the intensity of the movies latter half, or actually two thirds. The most generic display of Africa is really in the first half hour of the movie. Superior acting, good script and great direction makes tLKoS very enjoyable, and in some places very gruesome, experience. I have to give the nod towards Whitaker and say, that his Oscar win was truly deserved, as he was truly mesmerizing in his role.
My final score 8 out of 10