By Matt Brunson
Two recent films co-starring Forest Whitaker (Our Family Wedding and Repo Men) both tanked critically and commercially, so now seems like a good time to revisit the solid 2006 drama showcasing the mesmerizing performance for which he earned the Best Actor Academy Award.
Based on Giles Foden’s novel, The Last King of Scotland employs a fictional character to take us inside the regime of brutal Ugandan dictator Idi Amin Dada (Whitaker): Nicholas Garrigan (Atonement‘s James McAvoy), a Scottish doctor who agrees to serve as Amin’s personal physician and regrets his decision once Amin’s true nature comes to light.
The film could conceivably be viewed as yet one more work in which a white man is given center stage in what is primarily a black man’s tale, yet a couple of elements set this apart from such pandering movies as Cry Freedom and Ghosts of Mississippi. For one, Garrigan (nicely played by McAvoy) isn’t the usual bland Caucasian bathed in the light of liberal guilt but a conflicted young man with his own ofttimes prickly personality. And while McAvoy has more screen time, the sheer force of Whitaker’s superb performance — to say nothing of the dynamic character he’s playing — guarantees that he remains the story’s central focus even when he’s not in front of the camera. Paradoxically, you can’t take your eyes off him, even when he’s not there.
This article appears in Apr 13-19, 2010.
