The Last King of Scotland
(2006)
review by Died with Boots On

Forest Whitaker is one of my favorite underrated actors in Hollywood.  Even when he is second or third billing, his performances are understated.  Even in one of my favorite movies, David Fincher’s ‘Panic Room,’ he gives a quieter performance.  He is always upstaged by some other actor, some other character; always, until now.  Forest Whitaker made ‘The Last King of Scotland.’  He was inspirational, he was affectionate, he was unpredictable, he was brutal, he was insane.  You want him to approve of you, to be your best friend, but you learn to hate him, to love to hate him.  Whitaker deserves Best Actor.  If The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has even an ounce of integrity and good judgment left in it, which I’m not sure that it has, Whitaker will take the Academy Award home on Oscar night.  He was astounding to no end.  I can’t say enough good things about him.  I’m glad he won the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Movie Drama, otherwise I wouldn’t have gotten the opportunity to see this picture on the big screen, which is really the only way to see it.

The setting: Scotland, 1970.  Nicholas Garrigan (James McAvoy) leaps off the end of a pier with his classmates who have just graduated from Med School.  Later, he quietly celebrates with his proud mother and perfect, unimaginative father.  The senior Dr. Garrigan (David Ashton) suggests over dinner that his son join him in his practice.  The color drains from Nicholas’s face, but he toasts to the suggestion.  Later, in bed, he screams, releasing his forever-repressed frustration and anxiety.  He sits up and walks over to a globe.  He pinches his eyes closed and spins it.  “First place you land, you go, first place you land, you go, first place you land, you go.”  He stops it with his index finger: Canada.  He spins it again.  “First place you land, you go.”  Uganda!

The opening credits roll, and Nicholas sits on a bus filled with Ugandan natives.  A smile on his face, he looks out the window at all of the beauty and excitement happening all around him, befriending a local woman who he sits next to.  Unlike his bleak, gray, overcast Scotland, Uganda is lush and colorful and full of life.  The bus passes a military parade going in the other direction.  Dozens of soldiers ride on top of the tanks, waving their automatic weapons in the air and shouting jubilantly.  Fearful, he asks the young woman what is going on, and she says that it is a happy day for Uganda, that a military coup has just overthrown the Communist President Obote, and that their new president, Idi Amin (Forest Whitaker), is a man of the people.

Getting off the bus in a small village, Nicholas is met by an attractive British woman, Sarah (Gillian Anderson), the wife of Dr. Merrit (Adam Kotz), a ‘Doctors Without Boarders’ type who operates a small dirt-floor clinic that Nicholas wants to work in.  While giving him a tour of the small hospital, Dr. Merrit tells him that he feels like he is only skimming the surface of an ocean, that most people in the village prefer the witchdoctor to him.  Attending to an emergency case several miles away, Dr. Merrit leaves Nicholas alone in the clinic with his wife.  Nicholas is disappointed that he can’t accompany the doctor, but is kept busy with inoculations.  Later, while playing soccer with some of the local boys, he hears that Amin is coming to the village to speak.  Excited, Nicholas asks Sarah to go with him to see the new president.  She is unenthusiastic and shoos him away, but with some prodding, she is persuaded to go with him.  The crowd gathering ‘round is in high spirits, women singing and banging on drums and dancing.  Then, storming the stage, President Amin dramatically enters and throws his fist into the air.  The crowd erupts.  He promises a reign of peace and prosperity, charismatically spouting visionary objectives and reminding them that Africa is where it all started, the Romans stole their philosophy and the Italians took their medicine.

Sarah is anxious to leave, and drags Nicholas by the sleeve back to the car.  Nicholas has fallen under Amin’s spell, but Sarah is fearful.  She says that Amin has turned the economy into his personal bank account.  Just then, a camouflaged jeep speeds down the dirt road behind them, pulling them over.  One of the terrified soldiers in the vehicle asks where Dr. Merrit is, screaming that the president has been hurt in an accident and needs medical attention.  Nicholas says that he can look at The President and follows the soldiers to the accident.  A cow is lying on its side, bawling in a ditch on the side of the road.  The President is clutching his wrist, convinced that it’s broken.  Nicholas approaches him cautiously, the surrounding soldiers drawing their guns on him, and takes The President’s hand in his and feels the wrist.  He says he thinks it was strained, and wraps it tightly in a bandage.  Meanwhile, the cow grunts and howls and yelps, the farmer arguing at the top of his lungs with the soldiers.  Nicholas’s head spins, he can’t hear himself think, so he grabs The President’s gun, struts over to the cow, and shoots it between the eyes.  The President is in shock.  “You took my gun!”  The tension is so thick you could cut it with a butter knife.  Amin approaches Nicholas, looking him over.  “You are British!”  Taken aback, Nicholas tells him that he is Scottish.  He rips his shirt open, revealing a sleeveless shirt with “Scotland” lettered across the chest.  Amin begins to laugh, slapping Nicholas on the shoulder.  He says that he fought with the Scottish, that Scotsmen are good warriors.  He confesses that if he could be anything but Ugandan, he would be Scottish.  He jokes that he wouldn’t much like the red hair that Scottish women find attractive, because African’s find it disgusting.  He then asks for Nicholas’s shirt, offering to give him his own medal-adorned General’s shirt in exchange.

Later that night, Nicholas musters enough courage to kiss Sarah on the lips, saying that he understands her world of loneliness with her goody-goody husband being gone half the time.  She recoils and tells Nicholas that she can’t.  The next morning, Dr. Merrit wakes Nicholas up, telling him that there are men at the cottage to see him.  Nicholas pulls on a button-down and some slacks and hurries to the cottage.  The Minister of Health, Amin’s closest advisor, is standing at the doorstep.  He tells Nicholas that The President wishes to see him.  Nicholas climbs into The President’s limousine and is brought into the city, a far cry from the impoverished, disease-ridden village his British hosts live in.  President Amin is happy to see him, half-embracing him.  He affectionately calls Nicholas Nicky, and cuts right to the chase.  Amin says that he admires and respects Nicholas because he speaks his mind.  He says Nicholas is the sort of man a president needs around him, asks him to be his personal physician.  Nicholas is flattered, but tells Amin that he can’t.  Amin asks if he can’t because of a woman.  Nicholas confesses that that is part of the reason, and Amin tells him to bring her to live in the city with him.  Without responding, Amin catches on that the woman is married, admitting that that is the most passionate and romantic kind of love affair.  Nicholas tells Amin that he came to the village to help people, to make a difference, that he can’t just leave.  Amin is disappointed, but realizes Nicholas’s good intentions.  He promises to take Nicholas back in the morning if he will do him the honor of attending a state dinner that night.

After the dinner, a panicked knocking at his door wakes him up.  A soldier tells him that The President is very sick.  Amin is writhing around in bed, moaning, yelling that he’s been poisoned.  Nicholas notices an opened bottle of aspirin and a canteen of beer on his nightstand, and immediately knows what’s wrong.  He tells Amin to sit on a pillow and hold on to a baseball bat.  Nicholas sits behind him and on the count of three, they stand up.  Amin releases a tremendous amount of gas, curing him of his stomachache.  Amin is ashamed, revealing such weakness to Nicholas.  Nicholas assures him that he will tell nobody because of the doctor’s oath to confidentiality.  Amin is grateful.  He tells Nicholas stories from his childhood, appealing to his emotions.  By morning, Nicholas calls Sarah to tell her that he is Amin’s new personal physician.  Amin has taken a liking to Nicholas, calling him his closest advisor, his truest friend.  But when Amin is having one of his bipolar mood swings, his calls Nicholas a nobody.  Soon, he won’t even let Nicholas leave.  Amin becomes a monster, a cannibal, terrorizing his people, eating his political opposition, and all Nicholas wants to do is go home.

Based on Giles Foden’s award-winning debut novel of the same name, ‘The Last King of Scotland’ was better than last year’s ‘Blood Diamond,’ and much better than the Oscar-winning ‘Hotel Rwanda.’  The character of Dr. Nicholas Garrigan was loosely based around Ugandan President Idi Amin’s ‘white monkey,’ Bob Astles.  This film is one of the few that accurately capture the blight of the African people.  The unspeakable horrors and ruthless treachery that Amin was responsible for are carefully documented in the movie, exposing him for the sociopath he was.  He was paranoid and full of fear, and as a result, he was a butcher, killing 300,000 of his own people.

***Spoilers***

In one scene, Nicholas gets one of Amin’s wives pregnant, and before he has a chance to perform the abortion, Amin’s soldiers kidnap her and cut her limbs off and put her on display, making an example of her.  During the climax of the movie, Amin says he knows that Nicholas got his wife pregnant, that in his village, when a man stole another man’s wife, he was hung on a tree by his skin.  Amin’s soldiers sling a rope over a pipe in the ceiling of the medicine room, stab two barbed hooks into Nicholas’s chest, and tie the rope to the ends of the hooks.  A soldier then pulls the rope and suspends him by his skin in midair.  It is this gore and grizzle that makes the film seem so gritty and real.

***Spoilers End Here***

Not only was Forest Whitaker at the top of his game, but James McAvoy was a worthy hero to his sick and twisted villain.  He was rich with character development and he plays the octaves, starting out naïve and becoming bloodied and weathered.  Both men relied on method acting to immerse themselves in their roles.  Whitaker learned Swahili and mastered Amin’s mannerisms.  After they wrapped, Whitaker suffered from Amin-shellshock, waking up in cold sweats in the middle of the night, reverting back to speaking with the guttural Ugandan accent.  The two first-billing actors were incredible and I fell in love with the both of them.

There was never a dull moment in this two-hour feature.  This was one of those rare occasions where I forgot myself, lost myself in the magic of the movie.  It was well paced, albeit fast-paced.  The cinematography was unforgettable.  Some of the scenes had a surreal reddish-orange tint to them that added to the complete and utter craziness of the movie.  Both the original Alex Heffes score and the soundtrack set the mood.  Upbeat, staccato rhythms smacked on drums and the high-pitched twangs of stringed instruments played overtop to some mantra-like chanting swirled about the movie like a pea-soup fog.

This was an exciting film to watch.  This ‘based on true events’ plot was well crafted and the script well written.  I haven’t had the chance to read this nonfiction breed of novel, but I will definitely set aside the time.  Of the movies I’ve seen that were nominated for Oscars this year (‘Babel,’ ‘The Departed,’ ‘Little Miss Sunshine,’ ‘Letters From Iwo Jima,’  ‘Half Nelson,’ and ‘Volver’), ‘The Last King of Scotland’ was by far the best, most powerful, most mesmerizing film of them all.  Go see this movie, now.