Great Movie

Rating: 9/10 (17 May 2007)

Last King of Scotland is an excellent movie. It's a mostly fictional story set in Uganda in the 1970s. Idi Amin is the country's dictator. Nicholas Garrigan (James McAvoy) is a newly qualified British doctor who arrives in Uganda looking for fun and adventure. He initially works at a medical mission run by Gillian Anderson and her husband. Garrigan meets Amin in 1971 and becomes the dictator's personal physician and "closest adviser." He drives a Mercedes and lives in luxury. He initially gets on very well with Amin and when a London Times reporter questions the regime's brutality Garrigan naively defends Amin. He also declines to spy for the British government. Over time Garrigan notices that people keep disappearing and he slowly realizes that Amin is a monster. After having sex with Amin's wife (Kelly Washington) he becomes a target and eventually escapes in 1976.
Forest Whitaker gives a brilliant performance and captures Amin's manic personality. Amin is at times charming, devious, ruthless,cowardly, amusing, ridiculous, paranoid and a sadistic bully. The film implies that Amin used the British government to achieve power, but he becomes friendly with the Libyans and eventually severs diplomatic ties with the UK.
Overall it's a thoroughly riveting and enjoyable movie and works well as a thriller. Garrigan gradually unravels the evil around him and discovers he is out of his depth and on his own. Garrigan is a fictional character and the film gives the impression that he is in Uganda for a much shorter period of time than six years. Although Garrigan is depicted as an irresponsible hedonist who makes bad choices it's hard to accept that he was in the dark about Amin for so long. McAvoy is excellent in this movie.