Based on Giles Foden’s novel, The Last King of Scotland is amazing! It is a powerful thriller that recreates on screen the world of Uganda under the mad dictatorship of Idi Amin (played by Forest Whitaker) in the 1970s.In an incredible twist of fate, a young and newly qualified doctor, Nicholas Garrigan (James McAvoy) becomes irreversibly entangled with one of the world’s most prolific and barbarous dictators (Amin was responsible for at least 300 thousand deaths during his reign).
The naive doctor becomes Amin’s personal physician and closest advisor. Most of the murders are ‘hidden’ in that they are not at first shown on screen, until the doctor has a love affair with one of Amin’s many wives... When she becomes pregnant with the doctor's baby, she goes to a back-street abortion clinic where Amin makes a spectacle of her infidelity. His butchery of her is hideous. I actually felt physically sick, and I cried so that I had to look away from the screen.
Amin’s treatment of those who cross him is shocking. The scenes where he orders the torture of the doctor are not for the faint hearted. Again I had to turn from the screen with tears in my eyes.
This was brilliantly filmed. You actually hate Forest Whitaker for his portrayal of the mad-man, and I don’t think I’ll ever watch him in another film without thinking of Amin. I am not good with gory films, but this is one that you must see in order to truly recognize the extent of the terror and misery that this man caused.
Miss Robinson
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