Seven Oaks Magazine.

The Last King of Scotland (UK, 2006, 121 min, directed by Kevin Macdonald)

It would be easy to be cranky about the fact that Kevin Macdonald’s The Last King of Scotland is yet another film about Africa as seen through the story of a young white man, in this case the adventurous and libidinous Dr. Nicholas Garrigan (James McAvoy). Yet the story is too engaging, and the performances too stellar to dwell on the negative. Justifiably, this is one of the most talked about films at this year’s Vancouver International Film Festival.

Dr. Garrigan’s misadventure in Uganda lands him in the unlikely job as personal physician and advisor to the dictator Idi Amin, portrayed brilliantly by Forest Whitaker. The hefty actor captures the frightening combination of charisma, brutality and madness that characterized the 1970s strongman. Amin, put in power with the aid of British meddling, nevertheless put a pan-Africanist and anti-colonial veneer on his idiosyncratic personal dictatorship.

Amin’s friendship with Garrigan is sparked by a chance encounter and fueled by the young doctor’s Scottish background. The Ugandan leader did indeed have a Scot as part of his personal health detail, but the character in the film is fictional. Garrigan becomes a vehicle to explore some of the darkness in the human heart, focusing mostly, however, on individual failings rather than the socio-political realities that were the context in which Amin’s atrocities took place.

The young man flees to Uganda to escape an overbearing family and bloated expectations at home; he soon flees a remote humanitarian mission for the prestige of the presidential palace, becoming entangled in the intrigue, decadence and hypocrisy of Amin’s court. As much as his amorality and political naivete are to blame, the Scot’s inability to keep it in his pants also lands him in life-threatening trouble.

To his credit Macdonald chose to shoot the film in Uganda, over the objections of some of his financial backers. As a result, we get a more authentic look into the excesses of Amin’s regime. For instance, even the pool enjoyed by Amin’s four wives and British secret agents, among assorted others, is the real thing.

The film’s ending is, unfortunately, somewhat conventional fare. (Doomed natives inexplicably seem to always want to help the less than virtuous foreigner escape).

Amin’s life also ended somewhat conventionally for thugs in a world ruled by imperial hypocrisy and impunity for war criminals. A few months after George W. Bush launched his attack on Iraq, Amin passed away at the ripe old age of 79, having lived comfortably for years in Saudi Arabia as a guest of that brutal regime and loyal U.S. ally.