The Last King of Scotland (2006) - IMDb IMDb There was an error trying to load your rating for this title. Some parts of this page won't work property. Please reload or try later. X Beta I'm Watching This! Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Error The Last King of Scotland ( 2006 ) R | Based on the events of the brutal Ugandan dictator Idi Amin's regime as seen by his personal physician during the 1970's. Director: From $2.99 (SD) on Amazon Video ON DISC a list of 42 titles created 01 Dec 2010 a list of 34 titles created 14 Apr 2011 a list of 22 titles created 10 Jan 2012 a list of 47 titles created 14 Nov 2015 a list of 32 titles created 6 months ago Title: The Last King of Scotland (2006) 7.7/10 Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin.

Won 1 Oscar. Another 47 wins & 30 nominations. See more awards » Videos 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 7.7/10 X The story of the life and career of the legendary rhythm and blues musician Ray Charles , from his humble beginnings in the South, where he went blind at age seven, to his meteoric rise to stardom during the 1950s and 1960s. Director: Taylor Hackford Filmmaker Davis Guggenheim follows Al Gore on the lecture circuit, as the former presidential candidate campaigns to raise public awareness of the dangers of global warming and calls for immediate action to curb its destructive effects on the environment. Director: Davis Guggenheim A politically charged epic about the state of the oil industry in the hands of those personally involved and affected by it. Director: Stephen Gaghan A widower is determined to get to the bottom of a potentially explosive secret involving his wife's murder, big business, and corporate corruption.

Director: Fernando Meirelles 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 7.4/10 X In 1959, Truman Capote learns of the murder of a Kansas family and decides to write a book about the case. While researching for his novel In Cold Blood, Capote forms a relationship with one of the killers, Perry Smith, who is on death row. Director: Bennett Miller A look at tightrope walker Philippe Petit's daring, but illegal, high-wire routine performed between New York City's World Trade Center's twin towers in 1974, what some consider, "the artistic crime of the century." Director: James Marsh The story of Harvey Milk , and his struggles as an American gay activist who fought for gay rights and became California's first openly gay elected official. Director: Gus Van Sant Alex Gibney exposes the haunting details of the USA's torture and interrogation practices during the War in Afghanistan. Director: Alex Gibney In the Antarctic, every March since the beginning of time, the quest begins to find the perfect mate and start a family.

Director: Luc Jacquet After the death of Princess Diana , Queen Elizabeth II struggles with her reaction to a sequence of events nobody could have predicted. Director: Stephen Frears Two documentary filmmakers chronicle their time in Sonagchi, Calcutta and the relationships they developed with children of prostitutes who work the city's notorious red light district. Directors: Zana Briski, Ross Kauffman Stars: Kochi, Avijit Halder, Shanti Das A law firm brings in its "fixer" to remedy the situation after a lawyer has a breakdown while representing a chemical company that he knows is guilty in a multibillion-dollar class action suit. Director: Tony Gilroy Edit Storyline In the early 1970s, Nicholas Garrigan, a young semi-idealistic Scottish doctor, comes to Uganda to assist in a rural hospital. Once there, he soon meets up with the new President, Idi Amin, who promises a golden age for the African nation. Garrigan hits it off immediately with the rabid Scotland fan, who soon offers him a senior position in the national health department and becomes one of Amin's closest advisers.

However as the years pass, Garrigan cannot help but notice Amin's increasingly erratic behavior that grows beyond a legitimate fear of assassination into a murderous insanity that is driving Uganda into bloody ruin. Realizing his dire situation with the lunatic leader unwilling to let him go home, Garrigan must make some crucial decisions that could mean his death if the despot finds out. Written by Kenneth Chisholm (kchishol@rogers.com) Rated R for some strong violence and gruesome images, sexual content and language | See all certifications » Parents Guide: 19 January 2007 (USA) See more » Also Known As: El último rey de Escocia See more » Filming Locations: $142,899 (USA) (29 September 2006) Gross: Did You Know? Trivia The Times journalist is played by Dr. Dick Stockley who is a British doctor who lives and works in Kampala, Uganda. See more » Goofs (at around 44 mins) When Drs Garrigan and Junju are discussing the chest X-ray it is the wrong way round - back to front.

See more » Quotes Performed by The Nyonza Singers (as Nyzonza Singers) Choir Master: Wassanyi Serukenya Story of Idi Amin's Ugandan rule from his personal doctor's POV 20 September 2006 | by fivepoints (Los Angeles, United States) – See all my reviews I saw this movie at a free Pre-Screening in Hollywood 9-19-06. Here's the good, the bad and the ugly. THE GOOD: Forrest W. acted his butt off in this one. Amazing. In fact, all of the actor's performances were terrific. The shooting locations were beautiful. There was a lot of suspense in the film and at times I was on the edge of my seat waiting for the next scene. I must admit the story was really good. There were absolutely wonderful camera shots and angles. THE BAD: Gratuitous sex and violence. Say what you will about Alfred Hitchcock being from another era in film making, but his ideas about implied violence and sex in most of his films were good ones.

THE UGLY: I would have enjoyed the film a lot more if it had been told from the POV of Idi Amin, one of his wives or a Ugandan in his cabinet. CONCLUSION: Would I pay to see this film? Yes. END 128 of 231 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes Last King of Scotland - YouTube Last King of Scotland Want to watch this again later? Sign in to add this video to a playlist. Need to report the video? Sign in to report inappropriate content. Rating is available when the video has been rented. This feature is not available right now. Please try again later. Uploaded on Aug 10, 2006 Out in select theaters September 27th. In an incredible twist of fate, a Scottish doctor (James McAvoy) on a Ugandan medical mission becomes irreversibly entangled with one of the world's most barbaric figures: Idi Amin (Forest Whitaker). Impressed by Dr. Garrigan's brazen attitude in a moment of crisis, the newly self-appointed Ugandan President Amin hand picks him as his personal physician and closest confidante.

Though Garrigan is at first flattered and fascinated by his new position, he soon awakens to Amin's savagery - and his own complicity in it. Horror and betrayal ensue as Garrigan tries to right his wrongs and escape Uganda alive. Category The Last King of Scotland Reviews & Ratings - IMDb IMDb 17 January 2017 8:34 AM, PST NEWS 288 out of 342 people found the following review useful: Basically this is excellent historical fiction about the torturous Idi Amin from United States 24 September 2006 There have been so few pictures this year that are standouts. This movie is one of them. Much of what you will see is true, and did occur in Uganda's history. Amin's doctor, played by James Macavoy, is the main fiction in the movie, but one would think they are watching a historical event. Macavoy's character is so real. The doctor grows from a free thinking, adventure loving, womanizer, to a scared, concerned, and enlightened person. The viewer watches through Macavoys eyes as he witnesses the horrors of Amin's (Forest Whitaker's) presidency and regime.

Forest Whitaker, IS Amin in this feature. Whitaker is not the silent sometimes brooding character you remember in other films he has been in. His accent,his face, and his emotions seem to no longer be Whitaker's but Amin's. This movie will scare the viewer because of its realism, and how it builds up to a tension that is hard to endure. The visuals are not for the squeamish. Go ahead and hide your eyes during the "tough" scenes. It is still worth seeing this movie for the fast paced story, realistic drama, fascinating tale, and for the unbelievable acting. By the end of the movie the audience is exhausted, but satisfied that they saw a worthy flick. Was the above review useful to you? 189 out of 223 people found the following review useful: You're My Closest Adviser from Dallas, Texas 1 November 2006 Greetings again from the darkness. A true tour de force by Forest Whitaker ... the best performance of the year so far! Somehow Mr. Whitaker captures the madness and charm of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin. Amin was one of the first political rock stars.

He used the media to his advantage as his regime slaughtered hundreds of thousands of his countrymen. Also impressive is James McAvoy ("Chronicles of Narnia") who plays the dramatized Nicholas Garrigan, a young doctor who sets out on an adventure to make a difference in a small country and ends up counseling one of the most powerful madmen in history. Scottish documentarian Kevin Macdonald directs the film with only a few lapses in directness, which serve this biopic very well. Watching Amin and the young doctor immerse themselves in the shower of power is both frightening and sickening. Macdonald captures this spirit very well thanks mostly to his willingness to let his two leads do their thing. As Amin laughs and tells Garrigan that "You are my closest adviser", I couldn't help but compare to Kathy Bates telling James Caan (in "Misery") that "I'm your number one fan". The evil and insanity is simply chilling. Whitaker is just amazing as he flips the switch from media darling to cold blooded, ruthless murderer ... and then back again. Just a terrific performance and well worth the price of admission - maybe a couple of times!

Good for a laugh is the most unique version of Janis Joplin's "Me and Bobby McGee" that you have ever heard ... guaranteed! See this one for a bit of history and the site of a real monster, but also for one of the best film performances ever. Was the above review useful to you? 182 out of 214 people found the following review useful: Forrest Whitaker alone is worth the price of admission from United States 24 October 2006 How can an actor terrify you without saying a word, without even hardly moving his face or body? I'm not sure how he does it, but Mr. Whitaker does it over and over again in this movie. And then he turns around the next minute and becomes giant hug-able teddy bear superhero. Forget all the others, this is the best horror film of the year. This movie, and his performance in particular, grab hold of you and never let go. Whitaker should win an Oscar for best actor, I've never seen a better performance in my life.

Also notable is the Nicholas Garrigan character who is written and acted very skilfully to draw the (non-African) spectator into the world of Uganda and Amin. The way his character willingly "falls into" Amin's web of charisma somehow goes a long way toward mitigating the racist potential of a story about a very troubled (African black) man. The way the interplay of the two lead character's cultural backgrounds plays out on screen moves the story beyond just their personalities and into the realm of incisive socio-political analysis and critique. This movie is quite incredible, really. Was the above review useful to you? 172 out of 213 people found the following review useful: A Hugely Exciting African-Set Thriller from United States 21 October 2006 With "The Last King of Scotland," Kevin MacDonald has created a bracing, exciting and totally satisfying thriller. Forest Whitaker gives a titanic performance as Idi Amin, Ugandan dictator who rose to power in the 1970s. James McAvoy plays Nicholas Garrigan, a Scottish physician who travels to Uganda for the adventure and wins Amin's affections, becoming his personal doctor.

Garrigan enters into a moral crisis as he begins to realize the kind of man Amin is, and begins to fear for his own life as events spiral more and more out of his control. Whitaker seizes the chance to play this larger than life character and runs with it -- I've never seen Whitaker give so convincing and transforming a performance. However, as good as he is, McAvoy impressed me more. His performance as Garrigan is not as showy, but it's much more textured and subtle, and his character has the bigger arc from start to finish. Gillian Anderson also does terrific work in a small role as a fellow doctor, who understands things about Amin and the African culture that Garrigan does not. Unlike other recent thrillers set in African nations ("The Constant Gardener," "Hotel Rwanda"), "The Last King of Scotland" is not greatly concerned with the geo-political implications of Amin's reign. The atrocities he committed against Ugandans are given only the barest of mentions, and the film sticks almost exclusively to Garrigan and the danger he himself faces.

Some may think the film is irresponsible for this reason -- that the plight of one man pales in comparison to the plight of thousands, and I can see where a criticism like that is justified. But the movie packs a powerful wallop regardless, and complaints like this seem like quibbles when up against such an entertaining movie. Grade: A 28 September 2006 *** This review may contain spoilers *** Life, unlike bad movies, is seldom obvious. In life, murderous dictators don't appear - especially at first - as mustache-twirling Snidley Whiplash figures, cackling madly (although Mussolini came close). The scary truth about monsters is that they are three-dimensional beings, not cardboard cutouts, who just kill a lot of people, but otherwise put their pants on one leg at a time, like you and I, and that makes them so much scarier than if they came from another planet.

In the best film of the "dictator genre," Oliver Hirschbiegel's brilliant "Downfall," Hitler appears as a man who is kind to his dog and his secretary (roughly in that order), and the impact of the work is all the greater as we witness what a "real person" is capable of doing. In Luis Puenzo's "The Official Story," Pinochet's reign of terror is depicted through a single act of violence, as a door is slammed on Norma Aleandro's hand; the effect is stunning and "real." In the hands of a less talented director, the story of Idi Amin would be told against mountains of skulls and bones left behind by Uganda's mad ruler in the 1970s.

(His total toll is estimated at 300,000.) In Kevin Macdonald's complex, intelligent, gripping "The Last King of Scotland," more than half of the two-hour film subtly implies, hints at the dark forces underneath normalcy while "life goes on." And so, having established real contact with the audience, a jolly and seductive Forest Whitaker then takes our breath away as the mask comes off, and his Amin reaches out from the screen for your throat. Macdonald - whose previous works are documentaries, including the Oscar-winning "One Day in September," about the Munich Olympics terrorist incident - looks at Amin through the eyes of a young Scottish doctor (James McAvoy), a well-meaning, honest humanitarian slowly seduced by the Scots-loving Amin, who appoints him his personal doctor and then adviser. The McAvoy character is fictional (although Amin did have a Scottish doctor), coming from Giles Foden's novel of the same name, but just about everything else in the film is based on fact - so much so that some documentary footage is smoothly integrated into the film.

And yet, what's important and outstanding about "Last King" is that just as a painting can surpass a photograph in presenting reality, this film conveys the seduction and horror of a brutal dictatorship indirectly, subtly, unexpectedly. Unexpected - and welcome - are the many flashes of humor, both Whitaker (dictator with personality) and McAvoy (eager pup of a doctor with overactive hormones) making the best of it. The tone is set in the opening sequence, as the frustrated, suppressed young Dr. Garrigan spins a small globe, swearing repeatedly that he will move to the first spot ("the first!") where he points when the globe stops. The first spot turns out to be Canada. McAvoy/Garrigan takes one look, hesitates... and spins again. And so to Uganda... The linear, freely-flowing story-telling is masterful, taking us from the small village where Dr. Garrigan comes to do good and ends up doing well through a chance meeting with Amin, to Kampala, much court intrigue and colorful depravity (even as the fate of a nation is at stake), and eventually to Entebbe.

Fun and games, authentic scenery (the film was shot in Uganda), subtlety, psychology, a heart-pounding scene at Entebbe (after the hijacking, but before the Israeli rescue), nudity, sex, violence, harrowing questions about "what would you do," and all - "Last King" is a wonderful compendium of facts and greater truths. Also, a hell of a good movie. Was the above review useful to you? 100 out of 114 people found the following review useful: Whitaker's Towering Portrayal of the Mesmerizing Ugandan Dictator Lifts This Historical Fiction from San Francisco, CA, USA 2 February 2007 Forest Whitaker's ferociously charismatic turn as Idi Amin so dominates this intense historical fiction that it is honestly difficult to pay attention to anything else in this 2006 political thriller. Even though he is definitively the emotional locus, he is intriguingly not the protagonist of the story. That role belongs to young James McAvoy, who plays Nicholas Garrigan, a precocious Scottish doctor who ventures to Uganda to satisfy his need for adventure after graduating medical school.

By happenstance, Garrigan is called upon to help Amin with a minor sprain after his private car plows into a cow. Impressed by the young man's lack of hesitancy to take action, Amin appoints Garrigan to be his personal physician, a post that seduces the impressed doctor into the Ugandan dictator's political inner circle and extravagant lifestyle. Scottish director Kevin MacDonald brings his extensive documentary film-making skills to the fore here, as he creates a most realistic-feeling atmosphere in capturing the oppressive Uganda of the 1970's. Helping considerably with this image are the vibrant color contrasts in Anthony Dod Mantle's cinematography and the propulsive action induced by Justine Wright's sharp editing. Screenwriters Peter Morgan (who also wrote "The Queen") and Jeremy Brock have developed a sharply delineated character study of Amin, who evolves from a magnetic leader giving hope to his people to a scarifying tyrant conducting murders on an imaginable scale (at least until the genocides in Rwanda and Darfur). It is impossible to over-praise Whitaker's towering performance here.

He conveys the dictator's playfulness as well as his unmitigated rage moving from simmering to full boil with a power that is at once bravura and subtle. His relationship with the fictionalized Garrigan turns out to be the plot's essential pivot point, although the contrast between the two can be almost too extreme at times. While McAvoy admirably captures the boyish naiveté of Garrigan, the character is drawn out in rather broad strokes that make his self-delusion all the more contrived as the story progresses. To intensify the political upheaval portrayed, the plot takes a melodramatic turn into an adulterous affair and even folds in the infamous 1976 Entebbe hijacking incident to illustrate Garrigan's increasingly precarious situation. It's all exciting and even downright brutalizing toward the end, but it also starts to feel a bit too Hollywood in execution. Kerry Washington shows genuine versatility as Amin's cloistered third wife Kay, while Simon McBurney oozes cynical suspicion with ease as a British operative. A convincingly Brit-accented Gillian Anderson makes her few scenes count as a weary clinic worker who proves to have better instincts than Garrigan.

But see the movie for Whitaker's magnificent work. He is that good. Was the above review useful to you? 111 out of 136 people found the following review useful: Forest Whitaker-Scary as Hell 15 October 2006 *** This review may contain spoilers *** "The Last King of Scotland" is a slickly made powder keg of a film about Idi Amin's (Forest Whitaker) horrific dictatorship over Uganda in the 1970's as seen through the eyes of his fictionalized Scottish doctor (James McAvoy). Whitaker is mesmerizing from the word "go" and brilliantly displays how captivating a character Amin was: charming, theatrical, paranoid, and mad as hell. Director Kevin MacDonald only alludes to the horrors (300,000 massacred) while delivering a music-video style account of the free-wheeling decadence of Amin's regime while he still played in favor to his people. Much of the film runs like the early parts of P.T.

Anderson's "Boogie Nights" or any gangster saga from Scrorsese: hyper-edited, smoothly shot scenes depicting humor, violence, sex, nudity, and overly-indulged individuals new to money and power. It would've been more compelling had tighter focus been paid to Amin instead of the highly unlikable doctor character, who for the most part comes across as a flighty, over-educated twit with foggy ideas on good deeds and uncontrollable hormones that lead him to hounding after every marginally attractive married woman he comes across, including a barely recognizable Gillian Anderson donning a British accent, and Kerry Washington as Amin's third wife (duh, doc!). About two-thirds of the way through, MacDonald lets Whitaker loose, and his rampage is awe-inspiring. It culminates in a pulse-pounding white-knuckle twenty minutes that muddle a historical event concerning Israeli hostages with the shockingly brutal finale of the young Scott's stay in Uganda. Again, it would've been more emotionally involving had the doctor been more deserving of our sympathy. Still, Whitaker is fuming and unforgettable.

He totally embodies the spirit of the oft-discussed and debated mad dictator, so much so that when the closing credits roll and we see stock footage of the real Amin, you'd swear these were images of Idi Amin playing Forest Whitaker. Was the above review useful to you? 89 out of 110 people found the following review useful: Astonishing film, that is carried by a great story and performances from Australia 11 April 2007 The last king of Scotland is scorcher of a film that follows the story of the horrid dictatorship that took over Uganda in the 1970s. The movie is seen completely through the eyes of young Nicolas Garrigan( James Mcavoy)a young Scottish doctor who decides he is tired of Scotland and ready to venture into another country to make a difference. Soon after he begins his work in the town he begins a friendship with Idi Amin(Forest Whitaker)a powerful African leader who offers Garrigan a job as his personal doctor. Their developing relationship is wonderful to behold on screen, and for me was the main strength and the key point that made this movie go above and beyond.

Spoiler ahead: Being a ill informed young adult I know close to nothing about African history, so therefore I had no idea what kind of leader Idi Amin was until the crashing scene when Garrigan figures out that he is actually a murderous dictator, who is destroying the African economy. This misfortune of mine made this particular moment in the film simply magic, and I found myself just trying to get my head around how such a loving and joyful character can actually be so violent. End of Spoiler: This is where I realized what a fantastic performance Forest Whitaker had actually given. He had fooled me into thinking he was someone else, he had made me think that he was actually a genuine democrat only concerned about the Ugandan people. His change in character is so superb at times too that I found myself thinking that is simply unfair. James Mcavoy although overshadowed by Forest Whitakers brilliant performance deserves credit too. His portrayal of the young Scottish doctor who is both naive and brave is fantastic, and it is great to watch the young Scotsman grow with every movie hes in. Overall this is a simply astonishing film, telling an important story with some great performances.

No criticism even worth mentioning for this movie that kept me on the edge of my seat til the very end. Was the above review useful to you? 124 out of 181 people found the following review useful: Oscar is written all over it 26 September 2006 *** This review may contain spoilers *** A freshly graduated young doctor Nicolas from Scotland went to Uganda in 1970s hoping that he could offer his helping hands to the Ugandan people. Instead of serving the poor and needed, he met the charismatic Uganda dictator Idi Amin and his life is forever changed. I didn't know anything about Idi Amin before the film, but I know a great deal about him after the film. He is charismatic yet brutal. I can see myself to become his friend when I first meet him and then realize that he can be the worst monster in my life and I want to escape far away from him. Idi Amin's character is so lively and fascinating in this film, through the terrific performance by Forest Whitaker. I know it's just the beginning of the Oscar season, but Forest Whitaker definitely gives an Oscar worthy performance in this film as Idi Amin.

It's such a gripping film that keeps me on the edge of my seat all the time. The performance is outstanding, the cinematography is breathtaking, the story is compelling, the music is deeply moving, and the film is simply fantastic. And the Oscar is written all over it. Yes, I am giving it a rare 10 out of 10. Was the above review useful to you? 63 out of 80 people found the following review useful: Toxic temptations 30 September 2006 *** This review may contain spoilers *** In this film Kevin Macdonald, a Scot, directs James McAvoy, a Scot, as Nicholas Garrigan, a brash, spirited, and foolish young doctor just out of medical school in the early 1970's who overnight becomes a close associate of Idi Amin (Forest Whitaker), the new dictator of Uganda. Amin had served in the British army and developed an admiration for the Scots. He gave himself the title "His Excellency President for Life Field Marshal Al Hadji Dr.

Idi Amin, VC, DSO, MC, King of Scotland, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Sea and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular." He liked to dress his soldiers in kilts and have them sing Scottish songs. Before this Macdonald made Touching the Void and other documentaries, including One Day in September, about the Munich Israeli Olympic team massacre. This film, which is not a documentary and departs freely from fact at least at certain key points, is based on the 1997 novel by Giles Foden, which concerns the doctor. But Macdonald's writers, including Jeremy Brock, who penned Mrs. Brown, and Peter Morgan, who scripted Frears' The Queen, have jazzed up the more bland original character and made him younger and bolder. Garrigan has picked Uganda at random. He is attractive and dashing: he's already flirting with the pretty blonde wife of the head of the rural medical clinic he's come to work in, when he's grabbed, with her, to "save" the paranoid Amin.

The newly ascended President for Life has hurt his hand in an accident involving a farmer's cow. Garrigan impresses Amin by not just calmly fixing his sprained hand but also grabbing his presidential pistol and putting the cow out of its misery. When Amin learns Nicholas is a Scot, he takes off his military shirt complete with medals and trades it on the spot for a "Scotland" T-shirt Nicolas is wearing -- for his son, Campbell. Amin has another son named Macgregor. Almost immediately thereafter Amin persuades the young doctor to leave the clinic and become his personal physician in Kampala, the capital (where the movie was shot), sets him up with a Mercedes and a posh apartment in the presidential compound, and makes him a most trusted consultant, allowing him to decide on the design for a major building. Observing this exceptional access, a cynical British diplomat (Simon McBurney) approaches Nicholas and cautions him to "keep in touch," an offer the young man initially rebuffs.

Garrigan's seduced, as are we, initially, by Amin's charisma and charm, and only gradually does he become skeptical and eventually horrified as he realizes he's the intimate of a ferocious dictator who, estimates say, killed off 300,000 of his citizens, as well as expelling all the Asians from the country. What's interesting is how the daring young man as we see him can hardly help being thus seduced; how the two men seduce each other. But Nicholas is in a terribly weak position when things go wrong. Whitaker and McAvoy play off each other nicely as they act out this process. Several dramatic events involving Garrigan in the two-hour film's latter segment strain credulity, including the way the young doctor's escape is intertwined with the Entebbe plane hijacking incident, and the kinds of trouble he gets into on the way to that escape. What makes this film, whose plot line can scarcely compete with that of the more multi-leveled and thought-provoking The Constant Gardener, and which has a grainy newsreel look that's undistinguished, is Forest Whitaker's astonishing performance as Idi Amin Dada.

Whitaker usually plays soft spoken, sensitive types. This time he nails a range from fearful to seductive to terrifying, connecting them with a seamlessly explosive energy. One would say Whitaker is this picture, except that it's unmistakably also young McAvoy's. Essential to the film is the way McAvoy, who's had mostly more minor and more purely physical roles before (he was the fawn in Narnia) plays off Whitaker beautifully and woos us too with his convincing enthusiasm and dash. This is a very watchable but also disturbing movie which one wishes might have maintained greater verisimilitude. When documentarians embroider the truth, sometimes they go off way too far. But this is not unusual: a great performance in a less-than-great movie. We have to take what we can get, and in The Last King of Scotland we get a very wild ride. Was the above review useful to you? Page 1 of 36: 'Last King of Scotland' Usurps the Story of Idi Amin Movies 'Last King of Scotland' Usurps the Story of Idi Amin Forest Whitaker exudes the power and paranoia of the brutal Ugandan dictator.

(By Neil Davidson -- Fox Searchlight Pictures) TOOLBOX Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, October 4, 2006 Somewhere in "The Producers," the crackpot Nazi playwright Franz Liebkind, melancholy over the way history has treated his leader, points out in petulant counterargument that der Fuehrer "could dance the pants off Churchill!" It's a classic riff, because it gets exactly at the artist's dilemma in any portrait of evil: Even monsters can dance. And they are dads, have loving kids, wives, pals and human eccentricities. Sometimes they are charismatic, attractive, shrewd and have very nice teeth. In other words: Monsters are human, too. So, if you tell their story, do you tell a monster's story or a man's story? "The Last King of Scotland" wrestles with this one all the way through.

Ultimately it uses the Fuehrer-could-dance take on the flamboyant African despot Idi Amin, said to be responsible for the murder of 300,000 of his fellow Ugandans during the 1970s before he finally quit the country and fled to a more hospitable zone to while away the hours. (He died three years ago -- in bed, one assumes -- in Saudi Arabia.) The movie uses a fictional device to get up close and personal and also to see the oversize ex-boxer first as human and only later (and almost too late) as monstrous. Initially, Amin seems almost childish, taking pleasure in the luxuries of stuff and flesh that his position of power gives him access to, indulging in his talent for whimsy (an admirer of the Scots, he took "King of Scotland" and "Conqueror of Britain" among his official titles) and, in the beginning at least, proving himself a powerful, empathetic orator who could rally the African street.

I'm not sure the fictional device works, because Amin, representing a human extreme, is so much more interesting than his witness, a young Scottish doctor of prosaic appetites and self-interests. Still, the director, Kevin Macdonald, has decided we need a pair of Western eyes through which to gaze upon such extravagance, and that we need also to see the brains behind the Western eyes grow and change, as a barometer of Amin's evil. So the story is no true, historical chronology of Idi Amin Dada, but instead takes its plotline from a novel by Giles Foden. It discounts Amin's upbringing, his long service in the King's African Rifles of the British Army, his many campaigns and battles, his rise through the administration of Milton Obote to chief of staff of the newly formed Ugandan Army, and the coup by which he deposed Obote, when Obote discovered irregularities in army accounting and was about to have him arrested. It never explains that the 300,000 people Amin murdered, in a fit of paranoia, were mostly of the Acholi and Lango tribes.

All that is passed over; instead it finds him in power, and when it leaves him he's still in power -- it's just that the pile of corpses has become too high for the world to ignore. The witness to all this is one Nick Garrigan (James McAvoy, who was Mr. Tumnus in "The Chronicles of Narnia"!), a young Scot just graduated from medical school, fleeing a dreary life as his dad's partner in a rural practice. Spinning a globe and plunging a finger on the blur, he pins his hopes on Uganda, so recently removed from British colonialism. Something of a sensualist, young Dr. G finds the lure of Africa irresistible: He loves the bustle, the music, the freedom and the available indigenous women. Working at a rural aid station, he's on the verge of consummating an affair with his supervisor's comely blond wife (Gillian Anderson). Macdonald has an equally fetching feel for the continent.

Possibly it's that the place is so instantly charismatic that in merely pushing the camera button to On, any Westerner records the color, the music, the pulse, the dust, the tragedy, the doom, the grandeur, all the bewildering paradoxes that make the place unique on Earth. Or possibly, it's that Macdonald's cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle has the sensitivity to catch the mundane with the spectacular. Whatever the explanation, the movie has a powerful sense of what Africa looks and feels like; you can almost smell it. Fate rescues Garrigan from his rural debaucheries, in the form of a large steer that has wandered into the roadway and encountered the dictator's Mercedes-Benz hurtling along at 60 miles per, leaving both large entities wounded in the dust. The doctor hustles into action, first wrapping the bellowing tyrant's sprained wrist, then, when nobody else will do it, gathering up the dictator's pistol and putting the screaming, crippled animal down.

This is a little cute for my taste, but by Jove, the big guy likes what he sees, and soon he's invited the young chap to come to Kampala as his private physician, just in time for the auto-da-fe. As Amin, the American actor Forest Whitaker is extraordinary. He makes you see Amin's charisma and cunning and understand the way in which he could (not that there's any record he ever did) reach out and embrace a younger, more impressionable man and woo him with sexual opportunities and luxuries and fast cars, until the young fellow himself is all but a party to the activities of what Amin called the "State Research Bureau," which seemed mostly to involve bayonet use in the presidential mansion basement. Whitaker also makes you feel quite a bit of Amin's paranoia, dating from an assassination attempt and exacerbated by tribal animosities, that produced the high death count.

Sweaty, physically imposing, wilting through his medal-festooned tunics, he seems like someone out of O'Neill's "Emperor Jones." But Whitaker and Sean Penn -- star of the similarly flawed "All the King's Men," almost already vanished -- probably get together in some small Sunset Boulevard club and drink the night away, complaining that movies in which they star as political demagogues and rogues of the first order turned out, upon delivery, to be about sensitive white boys. It's hard to warm up to the young Scot. It may be that Macdonald dresses McAvoy's Garrigan in the threads of the early '70s -- bell-bottoms, psychedelic ties, ruffled shirts and the like -- so that he seems more like a refugee from Three Dog Night than a doctor in Africa; possibly that's in the higher traditions of realism, but it distances him from contemporary audiences. As well, the young man's constant agitating for sexual satisfaction ultimately seems feckless and disreputable. Finally, his first commitment has always been to the self rather than the patient. Then the movie turns progressively more incredulous.

Nick tumbles into an affair with one of Amin's wives (played by Kerry Washington); when he gets her pregnant, he tries to send her for an abortion, then plans to perform one himself because he knows if she gives birth to a white child, she will be killed. Ultimately he conspires with British intelligence to murder the dictator, a plan that goes pathetically awry, and his fate veers off into Bondian excess, an escape attempt amid freed hostages -- non-Jewish passengers of the PLO hijacking at the Entebbe airport -- a few hours before the Israeli airborne arrives to end the crisis with some scientific applications of Uzi sharpshooting. In the end, Amin has disappeared from his own movie, and Whitaker from his own sure-to-be-Oscar-nominated vehicle. Oh, but stay tuned for the latest on James McAvoy. Strange and a little unsettling. The Last King of Scotland (121 minutes, at area theaters) is rated R for extremely graphic violence. © 2006 The Washington Post Company

Question: ‘The Last King of Scotland’ (2006) was set in which country?
Answer: UGANDA