Review of The Last King of Scotland (2006) by Liam C — 21 Oct 2013

If Forrest Whitaker and his multi award winning spellbinding and gripping performance as Idi Amin was not present in this film, there would almost be no point in watching it. While I'm sure many other actors could do the part justice, although none could match his intensity, the film is simply underwhelming in every other aspect. The mixing of fact and fiction is never really a good idea but surprisingly it did work here, even if McAvoys character was unbelievably unrealistic, I feel that it worked anyway, although I'm sure someone who knows all the history about this person might notice some things that don't make sense. it's just the script is very weak and the pace never really garnered any suspense or tension until the last half an hour or so. I never really got a vibe that Amin turned from people pleaser into dictator. In the movie, just by camera angles and long shots, the movie portrayed him as a man with something to hide but putting on a persona of a gentle person, or maybe that was the point?

In the same year another film about power and corruption was released but as this one was garnered with lots of praise, that movie was not and I feel that, that movie did it better. 'All The Kings Men' directed by Steven Zallian is one of my favourite movies of all time and even though the film was over directed I still feel that the story of corruption was told better even with its story that you need to 100% give your in divided attention to.

This movie was hard to rate, I only watched it because Forrest is one of my favourite actors and of course I'm going to watch his Oscar winning performance and all the movie is pretty much him so that gets high marks but on the other hand the film is very weak in every other aspect but we saw some of Scully so that's cool.

All someone needs to do is get an acting reel of Whitaker in the film and I'll be happy. And could someone tell McAvoy to put a damn shirt on?