vernon film society
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THE LAST KING OF SCOTLANDDirector: Kevin Macdonald “Director Kevin Macdonald has fashioned a film that is at times nearly as harrowing as his previous endeavour, TOUCHING THE VOID…. It offers a compelling look into how such a popular leader became known as one of Africa’s most vicious dictators of the seventies.” – James Berardinelli, Reel Views
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The story is framed around the relationship Amin develops with Nicholas Garrigan (James McAvoy, BRIGHT YOUNG THINGS, PENELOPE), a Scottish doctor who meets the leader while working at a Ugandan clinic. With one rash, decisive act, he impresses the newly elected president and becomes Amin’s most trusted advisor. Amin ruled Uganda from 1971 to 1979, torturing his political opposition, expelling the country’s Asian population and presiding over the slaughter of nearly half a million people. The question is why? Kevin Macdonald’s searing drama is too astute to serve up pat answers, but it does have one remarkable witness. Facing a life trod in the same dull footsteps as his physician father, Garrigan fled to Africa. Even as a more experienced doctor (Gillian Anderson, THE HOUSE OF MIRTH, TRISTRAM SHANDY: A COCK AND BULL STORY) warns him of trusting charismatic African leaders, he falls under the spell of Amin’s intoxicating exercise of power. Once inside the president’s circle, he is also impressed by his lavish lifestyle. By the time he glimpses the true depth of Amin’s brutality, Garrigan is in well over his head.
“Forest Whitaker, uncorking the power that he usually holds in check, gives a chilling, bravura performance as Ugandan tyrant Idi Amin, whose bloody regime slaughtered more than 300,000 people. This intelligent, sometimes gruesome thriller is based on a novel by Giles Foden.” - David Ansen, Newsweek |
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Based on Giles Foden’s award-winning novel and a Special Presentation at the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival®, THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND is the harrowing story of the rise to power of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin (Forest Whitaker, MARY, AMERICAN GUN). 
Macdonald’s gripping drama reveals the logic behind the madness that was Amin’s mandate. McAvoy is a mercurial young actor; playing a man with unimaginable horrors piling up around him, he is at his best in this breakout role: brash, guileless, passionate. And he’s in good company. Seizing the outsized character of Amin with his entire being, Whitaker gives a towering, all-stops-out performance. We have seen his deceptive charm before; here it comes laced with the despot’s staggering savagery.