THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND

Few films have made me feel physically ill by the closing credits—The Silence of the Lambs and Monster are a couple that have that distinction. Now I can add The Last King of Scotland, which builds with such relentless and unbearable tension that it caused the popcorn in my stomach to churn with discomfort. When you combine a ruthless dictator with an inexcusably naive foreigner, you just know it will not end well.

Forest Whitaker plays Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in a performance that rightfully has critics buzzing "Oscar nomination!" Beginning in 1971, just as the charismatic Amin has just wrested power from President Obote in a military coup, The Last King of Scotland introduces us to Amin as a leader who oozes with charm and possibility. That is until you see him flip out over a car accident just after a countryside rally. It is at that moment he crosses paths with young, white, and horribly naive Scottish doctor Nicholas Garrigan (James McAvoy). A cute horny young man in his mid-20s, Nicholas came to Uganda to practice medicine basically on a lark.... It's his highbrow equivalent of backbacking across Europe before getting a "real" job at home. This roadside encounter, filmed with great chaos, ends with Nicholas turning Amin's mood from rage to delight—simply over the fact that Nicholas is Scottish and is wearing a national football jersey. Nicholas is agog and excited by the enthusiastic attention, and his companion (Gillian Anderson)—and the audience—is understandably full of dread.

Before he knows it, Nicholas has accepted the position of Idi Amin's personal doctor—a position with perks and benefits, which include being shot at while in a motorcade. We can see this is bad news long before Nicholas. It doesn't help that he takes a shine to Amin's luminous young wife Kay (Kerry Washington). What? For god's sake, Nicholas, are you thinking? If we could only slap the boy upside the head. Unfortunately we can't, and things go quickly downhill.

This is director Kevin Macdonald's first dramatic film after helming documentaries like Touching the Void and the Oscar-winning One Day in September. The gritty "reality" style is all over this film, with shaky cameras, unneccessary zooms on random parts of the body, and murky lighting. In some cases this adds to the feel of the movie; at other times it seems gratuitous. Also, though The Last King of Scotland is based on a novel "inspired" by true events, it seems a little odd to take dramatic license with a true character (Amin) and co-star him with a very high-profile young, white character who, well, did not really exist. I expected a follow-up on Nicholas' fate over the closing credits, only to find that his character was fabricated. Hmmm. Not sure how I feel about this. I'm sure I'm not the only one who Googled Nicholas Garrigan after seeing this film.

But, that said, The Last King of Scotland continues the latest trend of intriguing, African-based films getting wide release in theaters and on DVD. Whether fact-based or fiction, fine political movies like The Constant Gardener, Hotel Rwanda, and now The Last King of Scotland increase the public's awareness of a richly storied, vast continent that is too often ignored by the rest of the world.