THE LAST KING OF Scotland (Kevin MacDonald, 2006) ***

Rating: 7/10 (9 May 2007)

Forest Whitaker deservedly won the Best Actor Oscar for his vivid portrayal of Ugandan dictator, General Idi Amin (even though newsreel footage at the end shows there is not that much of a facial resemblance), who starts out as being fairly benign but gradually turns to mass-murdering tyranny through his paranoia and mood swings. Showing the events from the viewpoint of his out-of-his-league Scottish physician was an innovation but, eventually, this drags the film into dreary melodramatics when the doc impregnates one of Amin's wives and, ultimately, serves to render the film unfocused and overlong.
The film is certainly very well done and generally compelling but, once one realizes that the Scottish doctor is a fictional character, the viewer is left wondering whether the director (or the author of the book on which the script was based) opted to take a foreigner's eye-view of this turbulent period in South African history because otherwise the project would have had no commercial momentum! Not much barbarity is shown but, when it is, the results are quite chilling - such as the vivisected body of Amin's duplicitous wife and his hideous torture of the doctor practically in full view of the Entebbe hostages, scenes which wouldn't have been amiss in a horror film!