Forest whitaker shines as brutal Ugandan dictator
NICK MACMAHON
It is about time Hollywood recognizes Forest Whitaker’s talent. He ensured a name for himself back in ’88 with his critically acclaimed performance as jazz legend Charlie Parker in Clint Eastwood’s Bird, but it took him more than a decade to shine again alongside Collin Farrell in the riveting Phone Booth. His latest film, The Last King of Scotland, succeeds on almost every level.
Set in the early ’70s, the film opens in Scotland with protagonist Nicholas Garrigan (James McAvoy), a cocky, naive and recently graduated medical student. Unfortunately, the two capital letters attached to his name have not yet managed to add any excitement or meaning to his predictable Scottish life. Like any young doctor looking to travel to an exotic country, he adopts the foolproof travel method of choice: he gets stoned, spins his globe and picks the second country his finger lands on (clearly ignoring his first finger-landing — dreary Canada). He thus heads to Uganda to begin making use of his MD, searching for a change of pace and, possibly, himself.
Garrigan’s first taste of freedom hits him like a ton of bricks when he is embarrassingly rejected by a married English coworker, played by Gillian Anderson (The X-Files), formerly every nerd’s dream girl. The second wave is a little more life-altering: he’s offered a job as personal physician to Gen. Idi Amin (Forest Whitaker) — Uganda’s new president, who overthrew the government in a recent military coup. Garrigan quickly becomes Amin’s right-hand man, living the “rock star” life until he discovers the madness of his new chum.
Although McAvoy is the lead in this film, Whitaker clearly steals the show, and now has a Golden Globe to prove it. In one scene in particular, Whitaker’s first in the film, he addresses thousands of people with a charisma that few actors could replicate, though Robert Carlyle’s brilliant performance in Hitler: The Rise of Evil comes to mind. Whitaker takes Amin’s character from raging fits to boisterous, jolly laughter as if with the flick of a switch. His performance is so good in fact, that it may take years of low-key dramas to separate Amin from Whitaker.
Hopefully, McAvoy’s work, like Whitaker’s, won’t go unnoticed for too long. Here, he captures the essence of that “don’t tell me what to do” youthful arrogance, while successfully developing his character’s personality so that, by the end of the film, he’s revealed as an innocent, terrified child, reaching for speed-dial to call mother.
There were some scenes, however, that added nothing to the film and simply detracted from it. Notably, one scene graphically depicts a drunken Garrigan’s sexual escapade with an exwife of Amin. To top it off, psychedelic rock blares as their lustful soundtrack, leaving the audience embarrassed for the director and maybe slightly aroused; hardly appropriate for a film chronicling a brutal dictatorship.
When depicting genocide, some graphic violence is necessary in order to make a lasting impression on the viewer (leaving the film with an R rating). This is especially true in a film that tries to answer the question, “Why is there so much hatred in this country?” as one frustrated doctor wonders (the Christ-like figure played by David Oyelowo). Hotel Rwanda, on the other hand, is an example of a failed attempt at exposing the horrors of genocide, going out of its way to receive a PG-13 rating.
The cinematography is superb, with Anthony Dod Mantle using his signature “bumpy-camera technique” to create a documentary-style realism, more tastefully than his 28 Days Later, which had most moviegoers reaching for their Gravol. This style is a very organic one for director Kevin Macdonald, as the majority of his experience is with documentaries.
The film’s main goal is clearly not to illustrate Gillian Anderson’s X- Files experience — “Trust No One” — but rather the opposite. Whitaker captures Amin’s psychopathic tendencies, which in fact were brought upon (at least partially) by his paranoiac distrust of everyone around him, including his closest cabinet members. Like many ruthless dictators throughout history, it was part of his rise and inevitably his downfall. The flipside to the trust coin is evident with Garrigan’s constant insistence that Amin is a good man, completely ignorant and in slight denial of his brutality.
Ultimately, the film can be seen as a call to action for our generation to wake up and critically look at what is going on in the world, especially in Africa, and take a stand. Like Rwanda’s message — take action now to ensure that future genocides are avoided.
