08.01.07
The Last King of Scotland
To sum up my feelings on The Last King of Scotland: not quite what I expected. It was well-made in the ways a movie should be. Very slickly edited and meticulously designed and engaging for the most part. I think that I expected something different mostly because of the Best Actor Academy Award (among many other awards) that Forest Whitaker (whose face, without exception, makes me think of The Crying Game and all the surprise dicks that that entails) won for playing Idi Amin. I expected a lot more of him - more scenes, more crazy, MORE! But The Last King of Scotland is by far mostly about Dr. Nicholas Garrigan (a Scottish doctor and historical fictional character played by the adorable and sexy in a short-guy way James McAvoy who you should be hearing more about any day now. He’s getting a lot of buzz.)
So Dr. Nick goes to Uganda (there is a scene where he literally puts his finger on a globe and says he’s going to go wherever it lands. Then it lands on Canada. So he spins again. Ha. CUT TO: Uganda, 1970. It’s all a little bit stupid, but I guess it gets the job done which is move the plot from Scotland to Uganda without wasting too much runtime). Ostensibly, he is there to help people and he meets Scullyand wants to fuck her (me too!), but she’s married. He happens to show up during a coup. Now, I know they didn’t have the Internet back then in olden times, but, couldn’t he have found out about the coup before he went? Anyway. He has a chance encounter with Uganda’s new president, Idi Amin, wherein he treats him and kind of saves his life. Eventually, Dr. Nick is called to the capital and Amin asks him to be his personal physician. He reluctantly accepts and proceeds to become Amin’s “most trusted advisor.”
Dr. Nick truly believes that Amin is trying to help the Ugandan people. But, he eventually realizes that’s a crock of shit and he’s actually a crazy murderous dictator and decides the best idea, when employed by a murderous dictator. When TRUSTED by a murderous dictator. That the best possible course of action is to FUCK THE DICTATOR’S WIFE. You might think this is a spoiler, but it’s obvious when the pair first meet that they’re eventually going to fuck. Seriously. I know, she was like his 4th wife. He totally neglected her. And she was pretty damn hot. But COME ON!!! I can’t think of anything stupider!!! So, then, Dr. Nick is pretty much fucked all around and has to figure out how to get out of Uganda.
Honestly, I got kind of bored. I totally dug Forest Whitaker and wanted to see more of his crazy but I got kind of bored and annoyed with the sexy-playboy-moron-doctor kid who ended up being the protagonist. Where Hotel Rwandawas “some really serious shit” this was “some really serious shit that isn’t taken so seriously except when absolutely necessary.” There’s some gruesome stuff toward the end, but mostly there’s a lot of Dr. Nick partying and even a scene where Amin is feeling ill and he has to make him fart. No, seriously. There’s a big Ugandan fart joke. I didn’t learn anything from this movie except that I wish it were better and Forest Whitaker got the Oscar Don Cheadle deserved 2 years ago. And James McAvoy and Gillian Anderson never fuck, so that was disappointing too.