The Last King of Scotland (Widescreen Edition)
by Kevin Macdonald
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Forest Whitaker, Gillian Anderson, James McAvoy, Kerry Washington, Simon McBurneyDirector: Kevin Macdonald
Brand: WHITAKER,FOREST
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language); French (Original Language); German (Original Language); English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Dubbed); Spanish (Dubbed)
Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD-Video, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 123 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-04-17
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Movie Reviews of The Last King of Scotland (Widescreen Edition)
Movie Review: What's wrong with this picture?
Summary: 2 Stars
What a wonderful first half of a movie! James MacAvoy was tremendous as the na?ve Dr. Nicholas Garrigan, a young med school grad who traded a safe career as a country doctor in his dad's practice for a life of adventure in a mission hospital in Uganda. Garrigan is a skilled doctor, but also incredibly callow. Arriving in Uganda at the time of Idi Amin's takeover in 1971, he intends to boff everything in sight, including the wife of his fellow doctor. Coming on the future dictator whose car has collided. Garrigan inadvertently finds favor with the strongman and soon finds himself the his personal physician. Amin then begins to give the doctor more and more responsibilities, until he is so enmeshed he cannot escape.
(Note: some spoilers follow)
First off, Garrigan is fictional, which gives the filmmakers a couple of options. They can either make him the eyes of the audience, a means for letting them see events in a naturalistic fashion. Or they can use him allegorically, making him stand for something larger than himself. In the case of "Last King," the filmmakers seemingly tried to use him as both, but without success. Large swaths of Ugandan history are kept from Garrigan's eyes, and therefore our own. Amin is portrayed as large and lovable, with only a hint of the beast within. When it comes time for Garrigan to realize what a murderous monster Amin really is, Garrigan is brought up to speed in just a few minutes. It's at this point that the movie became unbelievable. We are asked to believe that everyone but Garrigan knew what was going on in the country. But the good Doctor was hardly kept in isolation, so his continued ignorance (when surrounded by those who knew the truth and were trying to tell it to him) is incredible. Garrigan doesn't even function as an allegorical figure, represting the outside world, since Amin's brutality was well known outside his own country.
I demur from those who admire Forest Whitaker's depiction of the dictator. FW is too much of a teddy bear to function as homicidal maniac. His sudden turn from genial, oafish strongman to brooding maniac comes too swiftly to be believable. Watch the shots of the real Amin at the end of the film and in the additional material. He was a scary guy, with cold, piercing eyes. Sorry, Forest, but I would not have voted you the Oscar.
"Last King of Scotland" is a perplexing film that could have been much more. The final scenes, depicting the Entebbe raid in 1979, exist less for what they say about Amin or Uganda than as a convenient means for letting Garrigan escape the country. Why else the brutal scene in the room adjacent to where the hostages were kept? The film's first half promised a real classic about Africa and the forces that created a man like Amin. The failure of the film's second half, with its bloody scenes of torture, indicated a failure of nerve to follow through on that promise.
Summary of The Last King of Scotland (Widescreen Edition)
The new president of Uganda, Idi Amin, immediately takes a liking to a young Scottish doctor working in a rural African hospital and places him in a senior position in the health department, becoming one of his closest advisors.Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: R
Release Date: 22-JAN-2007
Media Type: DVD
As the evil Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, Forest Whitaker gives an unforgettable performance in The Last King of Scotland. Powerfully illustrating the terrible truth that absolute power corrupts absolutely, this fictionalized chronicle of Amin's rise and fall is based on the acclaimed novel by Giles Foden, in which Amin's despotic reign of terror is viewed through the eyes of Nicholas Garrigan (James McAvoy), a Scottish doctor who arrives in Uganda in the early 1970s to serve as Amin's personal physician. His outsider's perspective causes him to be initially impressed by Amin's calculated rise to power, but as the story progresses--and as Whitaker's award-worthy performance grows increasingly monstrous--The Last King of Scotland turns into a pointed examination of how independent Uganda (a British colony until 1962) became a breeding ground for Amin's genocidal tyranny. As Whitaker plays him, Amin is both seductive and horribly destructive--sometimes in the same breath--and McAvoy effectively conveys the tragic cost of his character's naivet?, which grows increasingly prone to exploitation. As directed by Kevin Macdonald (who made the riveting semi-documentary Into the Void), this potent cautionary tale my prompt some viewers to check out Barbet Schroeder's equally revealing documentary General Idi Amin Dada, an essential source for much of this film's authentic detail. --Jeff Shannon
Beyond The Last King of Scotland
 More from Forest Whitaker |  General Idi Amin Dada |  The Last King of Scotland (Paperback) |
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