The Last King of Scotland

Forest Whitaker plays the role brilliantly.

Such a damn good movie! Never a full moment

The narrative of this film was truly told in such a perfect way; the tone is exceedingly whimsical and charming when Nicholas is being lulled into a false sense of security and happiness, but then, of course, we slowly start to see the cracks in that façade appear when Amin’s true nature comes out more and more. That development was executed perfectly and the required sense of suspense was achieved beautifully!

P.S. For me, Doctor Junju was the true hero of this story and his sacrifice in the hope that Nicholas could somehow enact change for Uganda and its inhabitants really teared me up a bit

such a brilliant film. Powerful performance.

Very good film, strung along at a great pace, setting aside what is or isn't factual it was great storytelling. That said, by far and away the massively stand-out thing is Baby Forest's superb performance, completely transformed from his more usual roles of being a really likeable guy, here he has such a great presence, absolutely owning the character. Arguably one of THE best performances in cinema, certainly one of my top 10.

Excellent biopic about Idi Amin, dictator of Uganda, who was, to say the least, a very controversial figure. Excellent performances by Whitaker and McAvoy.

Choosing to base the film around the experiences of a fictitious doctor did the film a disservice, I think. This is an important historical story to tell, and it's clear that many parties agreed from the production trivia. So why inject such a large note of "fakeness"?

I do have to give the script credit for one thing: the tone shifts perfectly in line with the narrative. The first half-hour or so successfully lulled me into thinking that this was a comedy with some dramatic elements, rather than the serious drama it turned into. Certainly, fooling me would have been more difficult if I'd actually read anything about the film before watching it—but surprises like that are a big reason I sometimes just choose a film at random and press Play. Then again, it's precisely _because_ young people like me have no idea what happened in Uganda all those years ago that this film was important to make.

Aside from its historical relevance, Forest Whitaker is honestly the best reason to watch _The Last King of Scotland_. HIs performance is astonishing, and it's no wonder he won an Oscar for his portrayal of Idi Amin. The _X-Files_ part of my brain was hoping for Gillian Anderson to have a big role in the film, after seeing her name in the opening credits, but Sarah Merrit was a pretty minor character in the end. In hindsight, it's not surprising; her name appeared near the end of the list… (I also nearly didn't recognize Anderson without Agent Scully's red hair. Really, truly, I'm a recognize-by-voice guy. Faces aren't my strong suit.)

I'd say **7.2/10** overall—pretty good. Using one of Amin's real British doctors instead of a fictional Scotsman would have made it better. (Basing the film on a book already framed as the memoir of a fictional Scot probably made that a more difficult sell, to be fair.)

Very good film, awesome performance by Forest Whitaker, so sad our scottish doctor is ficticious, gave an overall feeling of fakeness in the storytelling, when there's a lot of truth in the henious dictatorship of Amin Dada.

[spoiler]A movie about a guy getting into some troubles because he doesn't know how to control his penis and the worst government security staff ever.[/spoiler]
Forest Whitaker was awesome as Amin, though.