Reviewed - The Last King of Scotland:Director Kevin McDonald skilfully blends fact and fiction in a gripping drama set during Idi Amin's regime in Uganda, writes Michael Dwyer.
SCOTTISH director Kevin Macdonald followed One Day in September, his Oscar-winning documentary of terrorism at the 1972 Munich Olympics, with Touching the Void, a riveting mountaineering story told through an adept combination of dramatised reconstructions and documentary footage.
For his first entirely dramatic feature film, Macdonald artfully blends fact and fiction in The Last King of Scotland, which is "inspired by real people and real events" and based on the novel by Giles Foden. It opens in 1970 as a young Scottish medical graduate, Nicholas Garrigan (James McAvoy) impulsively decides to practice at a small clinic in rural Uganda. His arrival coincides with the coup that ousted President Milton Obote and brought General Idi Amin (Forest Whitaker) to power.
Garrigan, a fictional creation, first crosses paths with Amin, a character so outsized that he could hardly have been invented, when the dictator's Maserati crashes into a cow. Impressed by Garrigan's instinctive response, Amin expresses his love of Scotland and reveals he has sons named Mackenzie and Campbell. The Last King of Scotland is just one of the grandiose titles Amin has assumed; others are Conqueror of the British Empire and Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Sea. To the bemusement of the British bureaucrats who approve of the coup, Amin appoints Garrigan as his personal physician and his advisor on setting up a health service for Uganda, where most of the population prefer using a witchdoctor to conventional medicine.
Through Garrigan's impressionable eyes, we get an inside look at the excesses of Amin's lifestyle, and the young Scot eagerly wallows in the hedonistic opportunities that arise as he falls under the demagogue's spell, blithely unaware of the brutality of the regime.
Macdonald's taut, vigorous and imaginative drama initially appears to be yet another film using a white outsider as a filter to illustrate the horrors of life under despotism in another country. However, just as Amin's imposing bulk towers over Garrigan's slight physique, the emphasis of the movie gradually shifts to dwell on Amin's volatile nature, his idealistic ambitions for his country and for himself, his susceptibility to paranoia and its violent consequences as absolute power corrupts absolutely.
It follows, then, that while the consistently impressive McAvoy imbues Garrigan with an engaging, boyish charm, the film is anchored in Whitaker's fascinating, robust and exuberantly intimidating portrayal of Amin as a man out of his depth as a national leader, making it up as he goes along, and resorting to mass homicide when he turns desperate.
