Interesting just by virtue of the subject matter

Rating: 4/10 (28 April 2007)

For a movie theoretically about one of the twentieth centuries most disturbing dictatorships, The Last King of Scotland is surprisingly lighthearted. The movie is bogged down with all too frequent lawn-party scenes, which have the feel of a Disney Land style attraction, mixing stereotypical elements of traditional African culture with Hawiian shirts, aviator sunglasses and formalistic sounding seventies hard-rock. The use of staples of western consumer culture (the Mercedes Benz given to Nicholas, pool parties, screaming wah-wah guitar solos) and home-video style feel, are perhaps intended to create a juxtaposition with the reality of Amin's regime. Yet the viewer is never really shown the dark reality of genocide. The actual genocide is reduced to a couple of photographs shown to Garrigan ( the doctor through whom the story is told) and a 1-min. montage. Director Kevin MacDonald's purpose is clear enough- to show a facet of Amin apart from the angle picked up upon in history books. Instead of seeing Amin shouting at the dismembered head of his disposed prime minister, we see him playing the accordion. Garrigan even tells him at one point: "You're just a child. That's what makes you so scary." The problem is that he is overwhelmingly charismatic; there aren't enough scenes where he becomes genuinely frightening. Perhaps that is the point, to challenge our expectations and preconceptions- yet it nonetheless feels like a sham to portray the leader of a genocide as altogether a sympathetic figure. Part of the reason why the movie fails in this respect, is the general weakness of the Garrigan as Amin's personal physician story line. For starters, Garrigan (James McAvoy) is embarrassingly naive. Amin tells him, "You came to Africa to play the white man," an indictment which rings very true (although this is partially because Africa as represented feels wholly western, but that's beside the point). For all of Garrigan's talk about 'wating to affect the world,' and 'to make a difference,' he comes across as extremely shallow, with a childishness to match Amin's. Except his childishness is mixed with airs of superiority. He seems most unbelievable when he attempts to become serious: when he shoots the cow (to prove his sensitivity to suffering, presumably), the affair with Amin's wife, when he stands up for a patient against when of Amin's thugs, His shock at hearing about the genocide (300,000 people were killed and he had no idea?!?), etc... In telling the story through his character, it seems as though it should follow some sort of curve: his initial acceptance of Amin as a positive change for Uganda, his growing realization of the truth, and then his eventual renunciation and betrayal of Amin. And to an extent the movie does follow that curve- but it's ultimately unsuccessful, because his character doesn't foster any feelings of sympathy and secondly because his break with Amin is so sudden and predictably carried out as an extension of his affair with Amin's wife. Whitaker's performance does live up to the hype surrounding it- it is dragged down by rest of the film, but his mannerisms as Amin are something to behold.