Whitaker is Oscar worthy
Actor's multifaceted portrayal of Idi Amin is career-defining performance
By Phil Villarreal
pvillarreal@azstarnet.com
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 01.18.2007
This year, the road to the best-actor Oscar goes through Uganda.
Forest Whitaker presents a career-defining performance as Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in "The Last King of Scotland," a harrowing political thriller.
Whitaker unveils a range he's hardly hinted at in a career largely made up of background roles. He shifts from jovial teddy bear to maniacal bull in an instant, at once displaying the intimidation and charisma of an evil but undeniably colorful figure. Whitaker plays Amin as a self-aggrandizing fool, an affable buddy and a fire-eyed murderer, sometimes all at the same time.
Amin's regime killed 300,000 Ugandans during his reign from 1971 to 1979. He died in exile in Saudi Arabia in 2003.
Paranoid and delusional, Amin slaughtered entire tribes for fear that they would try to remove him from office. He expelled Asians from his country and collaborated with terrorists.
"King of Scotland" was one of the nicknames Amin gave himself; this one he adopted because of his hatred for England.
Based on the Giles Foden novel, the film follows a fictional character, Scottish physician Nicholas Garrigan (James McAvoy), as he is ensnared in Amin's inner circle. Amid a weak subplot in which Nicholas carries on an affair with the wife (Gillian Anderson) of his medical partner in the Ugandan countryside, Nicholas happens upon Amin at a car wreck. After Nicholas makes a splint for Amin's hand, the dictator recruits him as a personal physician. Before long, Amin considers Nicholas his closest adviser.
Amin charms the doctor into trusting him until he's siphoned away all his rights and modes of escape. Nicholas unwittingly becomes Amin's trophy "white monkey," as others refer to him, and a cog in a murderous machine he can't slow. In one scene rife with symbolism, Nicholas is stunned after an encounter with Amin to look at his hands and see blood.
Director Kevin Macdonald made his first impact with the Oscar-winning documentary "One Day in September" (2000), which detailed the 1972 Munich Olympics tragedy, then followed up with "Touching the Void" (2004), a re-enactment of a perilous mountain-climbing exhibition.
In "The Last King of Scotland," Macdonald makes his move to narrative storytelling while retaining his eye for detailed realism. There's never a doubt, however, that this is Whitaker's show. With his fierce performance, Whitaker, who won a Golden Globe on Monday, becomes the early best-actor Oscar favorite in the same way Philip Seymour Hoffman did last year with "Capote" and Jamie Foxx did the year before with "Ray." If there's any justice, Whitaker will trade in the military fatigues he wears in much of the film for a tuxedo.
