It’s no small wonder Forest Whitaker is this year’s Oscar favorite; he is both captivating and terrifying as Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in a fictional film based loosely on real events. Unpredictable and brutal, the self-proclaimed ‘man of the people’ rises to power in a military coup, then slowly comes undone amid traitors both real and imagined. The film plays out through the eyes of Amin’s (fictional) doctor, a young, naive and ignorant Scot who blunders into the role of Amin’s physician and winds up mired in the corruption and devastation that pervades the tyrant’s rule. Part colonial condemnation, part Heart of Darkness, The Last King of Scotland is vicious, graphic and gripping. A.
Jan 30, 2007