The Last King Of Scotland

Viewer Rating:Mark W has rated The Last King Of Scotland rating: 2 Star

Before launching into an attack on the forces which created this film and then the entire Western world, it seems only fair to acknowledge that this is unquestionably one of the films of the year. The cast is excellent, the deservedly Oscar-winning Whitaker is superb as the unhinged despot, while McAvoy is brilliant as his confused, philandering sidekick. It helps that the cast is ably assisted by a superb screenplay, adapted from Giles Foden's novel, itself loosely based on the experiences of a British soldier during the Amin regime. However, all of these positive elements merely make it more frustrating that the film continues to perpetuate a perennial problem in the film industry. The film uses Western writers, Western leads and white eyes to tell what should be a native African story. 50 years after the end of colonialism and its thinking and it seems that the industry is unwilling to let go of the sort of backward looking repressive ideals which many, especially in Hollywood, fought so hard to abolish in the latter part of the last century.With the recent success of the Asian, Australian and South American film industries Africa now stands alone as the sole continent without a voice of its own on the world stage. There are, of course, exceptions to this, notably Tsotsi, these are few and far between however and it is about time that the continent is given a chance to show what it can do for itself instead of us in the West pretending to show an interest and satisfy ourselves that we've done our bit by going to see a Western vision of things we can't possibly imagine and then sitting around talking about how terrible it must have been.

Review published on the 14 June 2007 14:23