What Amin fella. Seriously, Idi know how he had any mates at all

Rating: 8/10 (15 March 2012)

Forest Whitaker's performance as the murderous dictator Idi Amin in this film is an endlessly surprising and deeply disturbing spectacle, a multi-layered concoction of corrupted insanity that is at once ostentatious and yet often keenly understated. It reminded me of Denzel Washington's Oscar-winning turn five years earlier as Alonzo Harris in Training Day: both characters have an unmistakable charisma that, for the most part, masks the immorality and resolute self-interest that pervades their every action. In both films, the entry point for the audience is a young, naive character (for Whitaker it's James McAvoy, while Washington's is Ethan Hawke) in a fish-out-of-water scenario, both entrusting their lives into the hands of these sociopaths. As is often the case in such situations, both McAvoy and Hawke's souls are at stake, the outcome reliant on the choices they make, whether to stand by their deluded convictions of the greater good as purported by these crazy bast*rds, or acknowledge that they are... well, crazy bast*rds. In McAvoy's case, he holds his own splendidly, and The Last King Of Scotland, in all regards, is a marvellous achievement, but ultimately it is Whitaker's show. Watch as he exudes faux charm in his many press conferences, as he has a fiery and genuinely frightening overreaction to a small incident and then, perhaps most captivating of all, simply sits staring vacantly, suggesting no semblance of humanity or compassion within his emotional grasp, his eye twitching once or twice as the only testament to his acknowledgement of the words of another. But, God, what a twitch.