Another Manipulation of a Historic Event with Magnificent Performance of Forest Whitaker

Rating: 8/10 (5 February 2008)

In 1970, the just-graduated doctor Nicholas Garrigan (James McAvoy) moves to Uganda to get rid of his conservative father. While working in a mission in the country, he meets the new President Idi Amin Dada (Forest Whitaker) after the coup-d'é-tat that overthrow the former government. He is invited to become his personal physician in Kampala and along the years he sees how despotic his friend is.
I personally hate the manipulation Hollywood loves to do with historic events. I have recently seen a good movie, "Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus", with a "pseudo-biography" of a real woman. The same happens with "The Last King of Scotland" where the lead and most important character, the despicable Dr. Nicholas Garrigan, is absolutely fictional. His character leaves his family, tries to have an affair with the wife of his friend, becomes friend of a bloody dictator and has an affair with his wife. Therefore, the situations are not the dramatization of true events, but only a soap-opera with the image that the writer wants to give to Idi Amin Dada in the story. My question is why he needs to use the name of Idi Amin Dada, and not an also fictional dictator of an African country inspired in the real President of Uganda? The way this movie is conducted I believe many people will believe that it was based on the biographies of Idi Amin and "Nicholas Garrigan", like a documentary, and not in an imaginary crap of a British writer. However, the story is engaging, well directed and acted, and Forest Whitaker has a magnificent performance and resembles to the real Idi Amin. Gillian Anderson is almost impossible to be recognized, thinner and with a long blond hair. My vote is eight.
Title (Brazil): "O Último Rei da Escócia" ("The Last King of Scotland")