The Last King of Scotland: B+

All the hype is true, in fact everything you've heard about Forrest Whittaker's portrayal of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin is true.

In a year bereft of truly inspiring, morally challening, and rivetingly dark work (unlike like last year say, which was gifted with David Croonenberg's absurdly amazing A History of Violence) comes Kevin Macdonald's bloody biopic about Idi Amin's Ugandan regime...albeit not without it's own flaws. The flaws I feel however are crucial to the telling of the story. As adapted from Giles Foden's novel of the same name, the movie tracks an unnamed period of time (during the 70's) in the life of one Scottish doctor, Nicholas Gaffigan (James McAvoy), as he firsts boldy strides into to Africa (perhaps to save it) and then comes under the influence of the charming, savage Amin (Forrest Whittaker) himself. Savage you say? Where the novel was explicit as to the atrocities of Amin's reign, here we get parties and happy black people. And even Amin himself proves to be a warm and silly presence. Thanks to Peter Morgan's script and Whittaker's quicksilver timing, Idi Amin is more of a teddy bear than a gorilla. The potency of the movie then, is taken from his transformation. The movie attempts to convey both Amin's influence globally and his power personally and it fails at both, that's not quite the insult it should be however. As was said in the beginning, every flaw is crucial to the impact of the film.

At first Nicholas is taken in as one of Amin's "closest advisors", their relationship soon takes on the sheen of the unhealthy though. What emerges is a father-son dynamic built eventually more on hate and fascination than any real affection (although Whittaker's "sincerity" will give you chills). As Nicholas becomes more and more involved with Amin, he is completely blinded to the cruelness of him and is eventually complicit in the hundreds of thousands of deaths at the dictator's hands. The best part of the movie is it's ability to convey these two sides of Amin, how his charm was inexorable from his madness.

Reveling in the two wildly differing performances of its stars - McAvoy is completely convincing as the reckless, good-natured, naieve "son" while Whittaker turns in a performance that sets the screen on fire: His bullying, brutish, merciless and protective "father of his country" (by which he means both Nicholas and Uganda simultaneously) is an impassioned portrait of insanity and it's physical incarnations. Bloody and funny aren't perhaps words that would go together well in a movie but they fit together perfectly when describing someone as indescribable and wicked as Amin. The film surrounding him is as happy for his presence as it is sickened by him.