The Last King of Scotland

Viewer Rating:mart1n has rated The Last King of Scotland rating: 4 Star

Nicholas Garrigan (James McAvoy) graduates frim Med school and heads to Uganda to, like,help people. And get laid. It's all a big adventure, until he's befriended by President Idi Amin (Forest Whitaker), whose massive charisma makes a horrific truth... There's no wonder that Whitaker scooped an Oscar for this and it shows. Less acclaimed, but no less worthy, is McAvoy. Sure Whitaker had a challenge - to lend dimension and emotion to a despotic mass murderer who once entranced the world's media with his eccentricity and charm. But McAvoy has to make you care about a med-school graduate. Last King is historically charged fiction rather then the painstaking reconstruction of director Kevin Macdonald's Touching The Void, but the demands of making a seat-edge-shredding thriller rarely impinge on the sens of truth. Staging the wince-inducing climax in the real-life setting of the Entebbe hostage crisis is a dare that pays off, compensating for a slightly forced build up to the final act. This is a minor gripe in what is a major work, though, with MacDonald putting himself in the front rank of important filmakers.

Review published on the 23 February 2009 15:03