One of my favorite comedies as a kid was The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad. The movie opens with Leslie Nielsen’s Frank Drebin taking on a number of world leaders that were considered not very friendly to the United States. At the time, I recognized Mikhail Gorbachev, Ayatollah Khomeini, Yassir Arafat, and Muammar Gaddafi, but there was one guy there who had some lines whose identity I didn’t know. I found out years later it was meant to be former Ugandan dictator Idi Amin. Even today I don’t know much about the guy aside from the fact he ruled Uganda with an iron fist as nasty dictators tend to do, there were rumors he was a cannibal, and he was living in exile by the time The Naked Gun came out. He was something of an odd inclusion for the scene that showed Drebin giving a very slapstick beatdown to all those guys as they plotted to humiliate the United States.
The Last King of Scotland is nowhere near that kind of movie.
Newly graduated physician Nicholas Garrigan (James McAvoy) doesn’t want to be a doctor in a small town in his native Scotland. Craving adventure, he spins a globe and let’s random chance determine where he’s going by planting his finger somewhere. That gets sends him off to Uganda just after a revolution has put General Idi Amin (Forest Whitaker) in charge of the country. Garrigan goes to work at a small clinic with one other doctor, and despite that doctor’s wife (Gillian Anderson) thinking it won’t be long before Amin uses the treasury for his own benefit, Garrigan actually has a “wait and see” inclination. Then he finds himself being suddenly summoned to help out Amin after the new head of state injured his hand in a car accident. It turns out Amin is rather fond of Scotland and takes a liking to the young doctor. From there, Amin requests Garrigan as his own personal physician and an all-around advisor, sending Garrigan off to do negotiations without even telling Garrigan what is going on until the doctor gets to a meeting by himself.
Garrigan, a young man craving adventure, finds Amin to be a compelling figure, and it’s easy to see why. Mercurial, by turns paranoid and playful, Amin lives a life of luxury, and it sure does look a lot better than life out in the rural part of the country. Amin offers Garrigan a chance at the finest clothes, access to beautiful women, and some really nice cars as “just because” gifts. But this is still Idi Amin, a frequent target of assassination attempts and a man who can be quite violent when his temper flares. Garrigan soon finds it’s difficult to leave, no matter how much he might want to. Idi Amin is someone used to getting his own way, and he isn’t the sort of person who lets things slide. Garrigan may not have set out to become the president’s righthand man, but he ended up there all the same. Now if only he could find a way out.
Whitaker won a Best Actor Oscar for this movie, and it’s easy to see why. His Amin comes across at times like an immature prankster, full of praise and gifts, and as long as you stay on his good side, life can be pretty good. However, he’s also highly paranoid and liable to change his mind about a person as soon as he feels even an imaginary sense of betrayal. Idi Amin, as a character, is always the most attention-grabbing man in the room, and not just because he seems to be a head taller than everyone else. When he’s happy, he’s the generous life of the party. When he’s upset, someone is liable to end up dead, and not a quick death at that.
Naturally, Garrigan won’t stay on Amin’s good side forever, and when it does end, it won’t be pretty. McAvoy does a fine job as a naive fellow who doesn’t quite see the repercussions of his actions until it is too late. It really is more a look at a dictator from the point of view of a young man who thinks he’s smarter than he is. Garrigan is never as in control of the sequence as he thinks he is, and he finds that out only too late. Amin, as a character, is perhaps impossible to understand, and it certainly won’t be done from a recent med school graduate who knew nothing about the country he’s living in until he gets there. Did I learn anything about Idi Amin? Well, the movie is based on a novel about a fictional doctor who fell in with a dictator, so probably not.
Still a good movie though.
Grade: A-
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