The Last King of Scotland Rating: B (Editorial note: I’ve conformed my rating system to those of my co-writers)

The Last King of Scotland tells the story of real Ugandan leader Idi Amin (Oscar-winning Forrest Whittaker) from the perspective of Dr. Nicholas Garrigan (James McAvoy), an invented character employed to give us a glimpse within Amin’s world. Garrigan is a Scottish lad who leaves his homeland for Uganda to see the world just after graduating from med school. Upon arriving in Uganda, he quickly displays his love for casual sex (an unnamed girl) and married women (a post-Scully Gillian Anderson), a malatov cocktail that will blow up when the married woman and the casual sex involve one of Amin’s wives. Soon after arriving in Africa, he meets Amin who takes a shine to the young doctor, asking him to be his personal doctor and, soon, his advisor.

While McAvoy is solid as the Scottish doctor who flings himself into the deep end of the pool before realizing he can’t swim, this film belongs to Forrest Whittaker. His charisma reminds us that in the moment evil is always more charming and attractive than good. But director Kevin Macdonald has more going on here than an historical recounting. The Last King is \ about the corruption of power and the evil residing in all people. At one point Garrigan calls Amin a child, but is every bit the child himself. There are real consequences for sleeping with a king’s wife, especially one noted for cannibalizing his enemies and putting their severed heads around the dining room table during dinners (blessedly not shown). Like Amin, McAvoy manipulates power to his end and takes what is not his. Africa and its people are the playground and playmates supplied to a rich, spoiled brat. The film ultimately deals with the monster in us all, the search for redemption, and the selfishness of both the West and the leaders of Africa.

Historical note: The backlash against Amin’s leadership in Uganda (based in northern Uganda) lead to current President Yoweri Museveni’s reign. Museveni is from southern Uganda. His lashing out against the North during and following his seizure of power lead to the existence of Joseph Koney’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in the north, one of the great employers of child soldiers in Africa today (the existence of which lead to the production of the Invisible Children documentary). The LRA has waged a 20-year civil war in Uganda, but also fights the southern Sudanese on behalf of the Government of Sudan, who funds and arms them. One of the other major provinces in Sudan is Darfur, making Sudan complicit in two of the largest ongoing humanitarian crises in the world.