Forest Whitaker's crowning achievement!

Rating: 8/10 (25 February 2007)

For years, Forest Whitaker has been a brilliant supporting player in acclaimed films like Platoon or The Crying Game. Now, like Philip Seymour Hoffman did with Capote, he has proved he has the right qualities to carry an entire picture. Okay, so this isn't his first leading role (he also has the underrated Bird and Ghost Dog on his resumè), but there's very little doubt The Last King of Scotland is the movie most people will remember him for.
Deftly mixing facts and fiction, Kevin Macdonald's powerful opus covers one of the darkest (forgive the expression) periods in Africa's history. It's 1970, and young Scot Nicholas Garrigan (James McAvoy, last seen playing a faun in The Chronicles of Narnia) has just graduated from med-school. Of all places, he chooses to go to Uganda, hoping to be able to really help people and, while he's at it, have some fun too. By the end of the opening credits, he's already seduced a woman traveling on the same bus as he, and spends the next ten minutes wooing his employer's wife (Gillian Anderson). It doesn't take long, however, before the situation changes radically: the newly appointed Ugandan president Idi Amin (Whitaker) comes to visit the village where Garrigan works and, fascinated by his methods and origin, offers him a new job. Although a little hesitant at first, Garrigan accepts, thinking his position as Amin's personal doctor might make things easier. Soon enough, though, he will be forced to realize he's actually working for a cruel, if charismatic, dictator, and that there may be no turning back.
Rather than delivering a conventional biopic, former documentarian Macdonald prefers to explore the complex and terrifying figure of Amin through his relationship with a completely fictional character, the young, ambitious and excessively naive Garrigan. In fact, although the title (which is explained in a quite amusing scene) refers to the Ugandan tyrant, the movie's real protagonist is the Scottish doctor, in terms of screen-time and character development (hence the weirdness of the screenwriters'decision to drop an interesting subplot almost immediately). And while McAvoy is far from bad, he can't match the towering performance his co-star gives: tackling the most difficult role of his career, Whitaker effortlessly conveys Amin's passion and childlike enthusiasm, making the character charming even when he starts showing his more monstrous aspects (cannibalism not included, the accusations being merely hinted at), as two particularly disturbing scenes towards the end of the film testify.
Overall, an incredibly good film. Macdonald deserves credit for brilliantly pointing out that dictatorships don't necessarily belong to the past, but in the end what makes The Last King of Scotland special is the riveting Whitaker. His portrayal of an evil and, at the same time, intriguing ruler is his most layered and rewarding performance so far, of the kind Oscars were created for, and this year's Best Actor statuette undeniably belongs to him.