Fictionalized account of Idi Amin

Rating: 10/10 (25 April 2007)

With "faction" flicks, you never know -- unless you're already up on the subject -- what license is being taken. That aside, Last King of Scotland is a tour de force for Forrest Whitaker, a strong actor who finally get to show just how amazing he can be. It's also a nice showcase for Kerry Washington as one of his wives. One thing about which there can be no doubt, it gives an unnerving account of a man who indisputably was one of the most brutal power mongers ever known to walk the earth. You want to talk black- on-black crime? This is a horrifying example (as is Tears of the Sun) of how Africans are in way above the sort of atrocities that characterized Hitler's holocaust inflicted on millions of Jews. It's a profoundly disturbing experience about a monstrous individual whom Whitaker brings to full life with riveting immediacy.