The Last King of Scotland
The Last King of Scotland
A couple of days ago I finally found time to watch “The Last King of Scotland”, a thrilling film about a young Scottish doctor and his tryst with one of the most ruthless men in the history of mankind. Quite frankly, this one’s the best thrillers I’ve seen since “Syriana”. It’s quite brilliantly shot and cut. For it’s 2 hour running time, the film is incredibly fast paced.
The performances by the entire cast are of superior quality, but it’s Forest Whittaker’s film all the way. I could think of many other actors whose facial features would match Idi Amin a lot more than Whittaker’s, but none could have brought about the spontaneity and exhuberance in this role the way Whittaker did. His body language is phenomenal and the chilling charisma he brings to the character is simply frightening. Of course, the Oscar buzz for Whittaker began spreading a few months ago, but this is not Whittaker’s first stellar role. Recognition comes more deserving for this phenomenal actor, especially after he was shamefully ignored for his leading role in Jim Jarmusch’s “Ghost Dog – Way of the Samurai”.
Go watch it before it slips out of the theaters (I hope this film releases in India). This one is for the big screen, not for DVD.
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
- I’ve hearing quite a lot about this movie and specially about the Forest Whittaker’s on Idi Amin. Gotta watch it asap.
You should. One thing that kinda suprised me about this film was that the director Kevin MacDonald stayed well away from exploring Idi Amin’s cannibalistic side. Although there is a reference to the Americans calling him a cannibal, you don’t see anything about this side of Amin in the film. I have not read the book by Giles Foden, on which the film is based, but the fact that Amin’s most infamous characteristic (at least as portrayed by the International community) was ignored, really stood out; quite in contrast to Sharad Patel’s disgusting 1981 film “The Rise and Fall of Idi Amin”, which pretty much only focused on Amin eating his people.
- I remember the 1981 movie that came around the time of the death of Amin. But is there any particular reason why the evil cannibal side of Amin is not shown in this one? I’m kind of confused over what balance the director may have achieved without showing that particular aspect of Amin
Well, the film most certainly shows Amin’s evil side, and pretty well at that. But Amin is not the protagonist of the story. The Scottish doctor, Nicholas Garrigan is, and his is the dominant point of view. It is possible, due to Amin’s affinity for the doctor, that he ensured Garrigan never witnessed his cannibalistic side first-hand, which in turn is why we as the viewers never see it in this film.
And Amin in fact did not die in 1981. He fled to Saudi Arabia, and died there in exile recently in August 2003.
- My bad. Confused my history. Your post certainly has me wanting to see this one asap.