Scooter Chronicles

On Monday night, Marcia and I watched “The Last King of Scotland” starring Forest Whitaker and James McAvoy.

The best plot synopsis I could find was on IMDB, written by Kenneth Chisholm:

In the early 1970s, Nicholas Garrigan (McAvoy), a young semi-idealistic Scottish doctor, comes to Uganda to assist in a rural hospital. Once there, he soon meets up with the new President, Idi Amin (Whitaker), who promises a golden age for the African nation. Garrigan hits it off immediately with the rabid Scotland fan, who soon offers him a senior position in the national health department and becomes one of Amin’s closest advisers. However as the months pass, Garrigan cannot help but notice Amin’s increasingly erratic behavior that grows beyond a legitimate fear of assassination into a murderous insanity that is driving Uganda into bloody ruin. Realizing his dire situation with the lunatic leader unwilling to let him go home, Garrigan must make some crucial decisions that could mean his death if the despot finds out.

For those of you that don’t know, this movie is based partly on real life and partly on fiction. It is mostly based on the book of the same name where the author created Dr. Garrigan and put him in the role of Amin’s personal physician (which he in fact had) and created his story around the real life of Amin. And also if you didn’t know, Forest Whitaker won the Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role for his performance here.

I know little of Idi Amin, and that which I did learn was from watching one of the extras that came along with the DVD after watching the movie. It is quite a shame that we don’t know more about the history of the entire continent of Africa.

The movie itself lived up to the hype. It was very compelling. The story felt believable given the nature of what some leaders are like. And what I mean by that is the circumstances that Garrigan gets elevated to his position. It may have seemed silly, but I still found it plausible. Amin had made a big deal about making the British leave and give Uganda it’s independence, and even offered to Scotland to become their King and help rid them of British rule.

Whitaker did an amazing job creating the movie character that Amin became. In some ways typical of the type of position, and in others rather different. I personally think that the nomination was well deserved, but haven’t seen two of the other nominees. I think I would give him the nod as well over Leonardo Di Caprio in “Blood Diamonds” and Will Smith in “The Pursuit of Happyness” (my review of that is forthcoming), but just barely.

That brings up the point of James McAvoy. I thought he was very good and in some ways was disappointed to find out that he wasn’t nominated. Again, I didn’t see all of the performances, but I did see one and a half. I don’t think I would have given McAvoy the Oscar over Djimon Hounsou in “Blood Diamonds”, but certainly would have over the real Oscar winner Alan Arkin in “Little Miss Sunshine”, or what I saw of it. I think McAvoy’s character could have been stronger, but it still was a very good performance.

As I said already, the movie lived up to the hype. It featured great locations, giving the viewer a great look at this African country, or at least to those of us that know so little about it. It gave us a thrilling story that wasn’t just thrills to make a blockbuster, but thrills to make it an intense film. The acting was great all around. The very ending felt a just little too-Hollywood, but not overly where it made me roll my eyes. And there were a couple of things that seemed more gruesome then I expected, but also gave more realism given Amin’s real-life nature. (Though it wasn’t terribly gruesome, I just didn’t expect it. Most should be able to handle it, especially since one of the scenes it flicks for only half seconds to the site, and Marcia didn’t pick it up, so it’s not glaring.)