Absolute Power A chameleonic Forest Whitaker dominates an awkward Idi Amin biopic

October 20, 2006 (Press Release) -- In The Last King of Scotland, an adequate thriller redeemed by Forest Whitaker's sensational turn as Idi Amin, freshly qualified Scottish physician Nicholas Garrigan (James McAvoy) arrives in Uganda in 1970, ravenous for adventure. Under the rigorous and vaguely romantic tutelage of a lithe blonde with a flabby marriage and a thick braid hanging delectably over her shoulder (helplessly played by Gillian Anderson in Hollywood shorthand for a help-the-natives do-gooder), young Garrigan, wearing pointy shirt-collars and a me-decade smirk, makes a brief stab at caring for the rural poor. But he's too feckless for the job, and soon a fateful encounter with a cow, a Maserati, and the new president rescues Garrigan for more glamorous pursuits as personal physician to Amin, who has such a thing for Scotland that he saddles his many children with names like Campbell and Mackenzie. When her prescient warnings fall on deaf ears, the blonde departs with a withering backward glance, and thus do the good times roll for Amin and Garrigan?two men gifted with an unerring talent for saying all the right things and making all the wrong moves. The difference being that one is responsible for the deaths of 1.5 million of his people.
Source: http://www.yahoo.com
by Ella Taylor