Dir. Kevin Macdonald The Last King of Scotland
[Thriller]
The Plot: Scottish student Nicholas Garrigan (James McAvoy), having just gained his degree in medicine, chooses a random place to fly to and exercise his new found skills. Ending up in Uganda, he finds himself employed as Idi Amin's personal physician and confidant. Things start to go wrong shortly after the genocide commences.
Much has been made of Forest Whitaker's headline-grabbing portrayal of the headline-grabbing Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland and, without doubt, it is a great performance. The story may be mediocre, the politics clumsy and the supporting actors disappointing but, yes, Whitaker is great. So too is James McAvoy as a slimy, often repulsive misogynist, exploiting the privileged position he finds himself in as Amin's personal physician, thankfully making it easier to overlook Gillian Anderson's abominable, gooey-eyed, one-dimensional temptress.
Where the film fails is in trying to cram too many minor characters and unnecessary subtext into a very basic plot – Amin was a bastard and we put him there, watch how the white man takes advantage when opportunities present themselves. It should either be more focused and twenty minutes shorter, or much heavier and forty minutes longer, yet it settles for an uncomfortable middle ground, resulting in a film that feels both rushed and, at times, plodding. It fails as a thriller by not being nearly thrilling enough, and it fails as Hotel Rwanda 2 by not being nearly deep enough. Honestly, The Sound of Music had more important things to say.
As mentioned previously, however, the two male leads are on good form and just about manage to hold the thing together; in particular, the scenes involving only Whitaker and McAvoy as Amin's mental stability deteriorates are frequently compelling. It also gets extra marks for ripping a particularly gruesome scene straight out of Cannibal Ferox and for avoiding what I thought would be a tiresomely predictable climax. 63
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