Great Acting, but too much Fiction

Rating: 7/10 (14 February 2007)

Forest Whitaker's performance as Idi Amin in "The Last King of Scotland" clearly has Oscar written all over it - it was a magnificent portrayal of a vile dictator who destroyed his country. Unfortunately, for me at least, the fiction around the character of the Doctor played by McAvoy took up far too much of the story - I had hoped more time would have been spent on th factual base of Amin's rise to power, rather than depicting imagined goings-on of his personal physician. However, despite the foregoing, it is a powerful film showing the horrors that occurred under the tyrant's rule and how the economy of Uganda was ruined by him and his "party". I guess there have been similar instances of African countries striving for their independence from European countries, and the horrors they have endured, and continue to endure.