Captivating portrayal of brutal but charming dictator

Rating: 8/10 (7 February 2007)

Hollywood is a place that loves a fad, even more it loves a surefire winner. Ever since films like The Constant Gardener and Hotel Rwanda, not to mention Tsotsi, won both critical and awards success last year, films highlighting social and political issues in Africa, past and present, have been the fashion for serious, awards hungry filmmakers. With Babel and Blood Diamond yet to come, The Last King of Scotland is the first of this year's big awards contenders to look at Africa and, on the strength of its showing here, is already in a strong position to at least win something. If the current climate of Hollywood producers desiring African stories has enabled Kevin MacDonald to make this adaptation of Giles Foden's novel about Idi Amin and his fictional Scottish doctor then this can only be a good thing as MacDonald has crafted a gripping thriller. Rather than show the effects of Amin's brutal and destructive regime on the ordinary people of 1970s Uganda, The Last King of Scotland focuses instead on the relationship between Amin and doctor Nicholas Garrigan and this decision is both the film's greatest strength and its one significant weakness. MacDonald is best known for his acclaimed documentary work on films like Touching the Void and One Day in September and yet here he chooses to avoid attempting the true life story option to tell a story removed from the suffering of the ordinary people. Indeed, the film's closing use of actual footage of Amin telling us what happened next seems strangely artificial. Thus, the film does not function in an entirely satisfactory way if its intentions are to draw attention to the horrors of the regime for Ugandan people. However, this focus on the two characters does allow for a fascinating character study of a megalomaniac as seen by one of the people closest to him and for two very strong central performances from Forest Whitaker and James McAvoy. McAvoy's Garrigan being cut off from what is really happening in the country at large goes some way to explaining why he remains loyal to Amin. There is also a clever usage of the British diplomat predicting how the regime will turn out and later trying to tell Garrigan what is really happening being a smarmily obnoxious upper class Englishman (played with great unpleasantness by Simon McBurney) who is such a dislikable person that we do not want to think he is right and neither does Garrigan. McAvoy plays Garrigan with just the right amount of laddish wide boy charm, managing to seduce almost all the women he meets including Gillian Anderson and Kerry Washington in small but significant roles, and untraveled naivety to make him likable even while accepting the friendship of a dictator. Garrigan clearly is a bit of a berk sometimes but he is obviously seduced by the combination of living the high life and the promise that he could have the power to do something significant. Of course, the other reason he is happy to accept Amin's friendship is the character of Amin himself. Forest Whitaker's captivating performance gives great depth and range in a way films do not usually allow bloody minded dictators to make Amin truly a compelling and fascinating character. In the early scenes when he is making speeches and inviting Garrigan to become his personal physician, we can easily see why Garrigan is swayed by him. His charisma is unquestionable and he has a good humour and infectious laugh. It is only very gradually that Amin lets Garrigan and therefore the film's audience get more glimpses into the real him as his paranoia threatens all those around him. That infectious laugh becomes threatening, like Joe Pesci in Goodfellas you never know whether it is a laugh of genuine mirth or madness and there is always a sense with Whitaker's performance that Amin could easily slip from one to the other at the slightest nudge. In the final scenes, Garrigan tells Amin that he's a child and that's what makes him so scary. It's a very apt description of a man who wields power with an arbitrary petulance, meaning Garrigan must increasingly act cautiously around him even as he tries to get away from Uganda as the truth begins to come out and he sees images of what Amin's regime has done. There is one particularly disturbing moment late on of a horribly mutilated body that means a lot to Garrigan. However, even in the final scenes, Amin is capable of turning on the charm, making his moments of evil more disturbing. A final hostage situation, MacDonald building on what he learnt making One Day in September, has Amin moving from charming the world's press to torturing his victim in the other room. Of all the torture scenes there have been on screen in recent months, this is the most harrowing. Taking its cue from Fernando Meirelles' strong work on The Constant Gardener, the film is shot with a rich colour palate and soundtracked with African rhythms, although MacDonald manages to conjure up an impressively 1970s feel, not just visually but in this style of issues film/thriller crossover. Once it gets going in the second half, the pace is relentless and the thriller aspect is gripping as Garrigan's desperation to escape gets him caught up in plots to assassinate the dictator, leading to the violent conclusion. A top notch thriller with two excellent leads, The Last King of Scotland should practically guarantee Forest Whitaker that Oscar for providing a glimpse behind the mask of a powerful madman. ****