The Last King of Scotland
Director: Kevin Macdonald
Year Released: 2006
Rating: 2.0
Callow Scottish doctor goes, on a whim, to Uganda to help the sick, and ends up winning over Anglophile Idi Amin, who takes a liking to the young man; the basic plot entails the kid coming to the (awkwardly played out) realization that Amin is a paranoid lunatic. The Forest Whitaker performance is indeed remarkable, if blustering and (at times) overbearing, and between his hulking scene-chewing the picture ventures into the grotesque (mutilations) and absurd (the soon-to-be infamous flatulation scene, the clips from Deep Throat, the reference to either Cannibal Ferox or A Man Called Horse). Barbet Schroeder's documentary on the dictator stands as one of the finest portraits of a despot I've seen - Whitaker must have seen it a dozen times, and seeing Amin in person rant about the Jews, his own Army and himself is too precious for words.
