The Last King of Scotland

The Last King of Scotland (***1/2)

The Last King of Scotland begins with Nicolas Gerrigan, a recently graduated med student in Scotland, perhaps unwilling to follow in his father's footsteps as a physician, deciding to travel somewhere at random. He ends up picking Uganda, follows through with it, and ends up working as a doctor at a mission there. He meets a married woman working there, played by Gillian Anderson, and nearly seduces her into an affair. But his travels take a drastic turn shorter thereafter, as he treats Idi Amin, the new Ugandan president (read: oppressive dictator), who injures his hand in a car accident. Distracted while treating the injury, Gerrigan shoots and kills a noisy and apparently injured cow using Amin's own pistol. Amin, impressed by his initiative and fearlessness, oppoints Gerrigan as his personal physician.

Slowly, Gerrigan's job as Amin's physician morphs into a job as his political advisior, as Amin becomes increasingly impressed with Gerrigan's character as he gets to know him more. Amin puts a great amount of trust in Gerrigan, partly because, being from Scotland, Amin feels Gerrigan somehow shares a distrust of the British, a feeling Amin developed as a boy growing up under British occupation. Gerrigan is, at first, a loyal lackey, hinging on every word Amin says about improving Uganda's infastructure, and gratefully accepting Amin's lavish gifts. It is only late in the film, and after Gerrigan has made several crucial mistakes, that he begins to piece together the gruesome reality of Amin's Ugandan revolution.

Forrest Whittaker won an Oscar for the film, and his performance is clearly the strong point. Whittaker at times shows Amin's charismatic facade that drew Gerrigan in, and at other times is nothing short of terrifying. Near the end of the film, as world opinion is turning sharply against Amin, and Gerrigan is administering him uppers to get him through the day, Whittaker simultaneously shows his almost pathetic state of frustration, and his enduring and frightening vengefullness.

The movie's main weakness is Gerrigan's character. It has nothing to do with the performance of James McAvoy who does a very good job opposite of Whittaker. But the film doesn't do a great job selling Gerrigan and how he gets into such a tumultuous position. The Gerrigan character is ficticious and a composite of several characters from the novel of which the film is based. At times it seems like this composite was never fully fleshed out. The film never really establishes why Gerrigan so brashly steals Amin's gun to shoot a cow and yet at other times seems as nervous and uncertain as you would expect a man barely out of college to act in unfamiliar territory. It never establishes how Gerrigan appears to be as well-studied and composed as a seasoned doctor, and yet seems so naive and oblivious to much of anything else going on. I've never read the novel, but judging by the issues with Gerrigan's character, I can guess that the film may have benefitted from staying closer to the original work.

The Last King of Scotland clearly is not flawless, but Forrest Whittaker's performance alone makes the film worth watching. Furthermore, the film does an excellent job of documenting the rise and fall of Amin, one of many figures in Africa who caused the deaths of many, and yet is much less infamous than he would be had he existed in the "first world." In this way, The Last King of Scotland is invaluable.

--EK