The wrong actor got the Oscar

Rating: 6/10 (30 May 2007)

In a far off land beyond the pale of civilization, there lives a powerful ruler whose merest whim is iron law to his people. Charismatic but childlike, his moods swing between extremes of generosity and cruelty. He takes a liking to a British person who is in the country to look after the ruler's many wives and children in a professional capacity. This person befriends the lowliest of the ruler's wives, with unfortunate consequences. At the end the British person is sadder but wiser.
That's right -- this movie is a remake of The King and I, only without the songs (unless you count Loch Lomond and Me & Bobby McGee). Don't let the up-to-date hand-held camera work, authentic locations, and fast-paced editing fool you -- at its heart this movie fits comfortably into the good old fashioned white-man-in-darkest-Africa genre.
Other time-honored Hollywood clichés make an appearance as well. For example, how can we tell when Idi Amin crosses the line into madness? Simple -- he screens a copy of Deep Throat while the soundtrack bursts into some oh-so-decadent heavy metal music. That ought to give second thoughts to all the millions of us who saw that movie and listened to that music in the 70's!
Forest Whitaker is good as Amin, but his performance has been absurdly overpraised. In reality, he doesn't break any new ground -- all he really had to do was thumb through his Actor's Handbook until he found the entry for Dictators, African. The real Idi Amin (seen briefly in documentary footage just before the closing credits) seems to have been a much more disturbing character -- less colorful, less charming, but even more brutal. If anything, this movie soft-pedals the reality of his regime.
And anyway the best performance in the film, and the best reason to watch it, is James McAvoy as Dr. Garigan. This character is really a slime ball -- he could teach Amin a thing or two about moral decadence. In the classic style of a 70's middle-class "rebel", he's really only out for #1, and to have a good time. He starts out his African sojourn by showing up for work late, having stopped off to bang an African babe he met on the bus. Next he attempts to seduce the wife of the saintly doctor (but Gillian Anderson, of course, is nobody's fool).
Garigan hesitates only briefly before switching from saving lives in the bush to the soft life in Kampala, after which he wastes no time in currying favor with Amin by ratting out the Minister of Health. By the time he sleeps with Amin's wife, with predictably gruesome results, I have to admit that I wasn't entirely sorry to see him end up in the hands of torturers. Nevertheless, the last shot of him on the plane seems to suggest that he may have finally figured out a few things about real life, or even perhaps about himself.
All in all, Garigan is a much more complex and ambiguous character than than this film's version of Amin, although obviously less showy. And McAvoy is brilliant -- it's a shame that he hasn't gotten more of the kudos that have been heaped on Forest Whitaker. I hope we get to see more of him, soon.