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Directed by: Kevin Macdonald Starring: Forest Whitaker, James McAvoy, Kerry Washington, Gillian Anderson Rather dissonant from its title, The Last King of Scotland is about the rise and reign of the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin (Whitaker), who came to power in the 1970s amidst cheers and adulation before proceeding to kill and/or torture hundreds of thousands of his own people. The story is told through the eyes of his fictional Scottish physician, Nicholas Garrigan (McAvoy). Fresh out of med school, Garrigan arrives in Uganda seeking adventure, meets Amin by chance, and becomes the dictator's "most trusted advisor" long before he realizes Amin's brutality. Like many others in the list of this year's Oscar nominees, there's a lot of really horrific, gory stuff going on in this movie that can be hard to take. Even though we realize from the beginning that McAvoy is being fooled in his initial impression of Amin as a dedicated and benevolent populist, it's still easy to sympathize with his growing sense of fear and angst as his eyes are opened to more and more of Amin's crimes against humanity. Whitaker's performance is an astounding balancing act, but McAvoy (a personal favorite actor of mine since "Inside I'm Dancing," released as "Rory O'Shea Was Here" in the U.S.) holds his own, and in the end it's Garrigan whose narrative is fully told and understood, while Amin's internal story remains fascinatingly, and terrifyingly, alien. RATING: 4.5 PROS: Spellbindingly brutal CONS: Spellbindingly brutal ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0455590/ Propaniac fucked around with this message at 23:38 on Feb 11, 2007 |
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Feb 11, 2007 23:03
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| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 04:37 |
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