An excellent mix of fact and fiction

Rating: 8/10 (15 May 2007)

As a long-time student of Idi Amin, I awaited The Last King of Scotland much much anticipation. And on my first viewing, I was not disappointed.
Some people have criticised the presence of the character of Nicholas Garrigan (James McAvoy) but I think it works well in that his view of events joins a number of factual dots very nicely - including the murder of Amin's wife Kay, who was indeed butchered in the brutal way portrayed in the film. I don't think a tight narrative could have been otherwise achieved without making it look like a pseudo-documentary.
The character of Amin (played by the excellent Forest Whitaker) was almost as scary as the real thing - the body language was excellent, but I felt something somewhere was missing. Maybe I have seen too much footage of the real Amin. In particular in this case the eyes didn't have it - Whitaker cannot escape the fact that he exudes a certain humanity that Amin clearly lacked; and without being churlish, the actor's lazy eye also played a little part as well.
Then there was the East African accent which was spot on - but again something was missing in that many of Amin's verbal quirks were overlooked. For example Amin had this very African habit of pluralising certain words, but this doesn't appear to have been spotted by the scriptwriters when they were watching the original footage. On many occasions he often emphasised a point with the overuse of the word 'completely' and the phrase 'I think you should know this' - but the former was used only twice in the film. If you watch Barbet Schroeder's documentary film and then follow this with LKOS, you would be able to spot these subtle differences.
Still, I am probably picking at straws here. Overall I found the film very enjoyable, and would definitely recommend it to anyone even remotely interested in these events.