The Last King of Scotland

Kevin Macdonald came to his first fiction feature having already won Best Documentary (Feature) at the 72nd Academy Awards for One Day in September. A young Scottish doctor reaches Uganda in 1970 and ends up as Idi Amin’s personal physician. It was shot in Uganda. Forest Whitaker worked on Swahili and the accent, went through recordings, books and documentaries, and in the country met Amin’s brother and sister, his ministers and his generals. He says he researched this part more than any other. The doctor is invented. Giles Foden, who wrote the novel, has acknowledged that Bob Astles, an Englishman who worked with Amin, fed the character. The closing caption is wrong: it says all but one hostage was freed at Entebbe, when three died in the raid, and the killing of an elderly hostage taken to a hospital, which the novel covers, is absent. Whitaker won Best Actor in a Leading Role at the 79th Academy Awards. At the 60th BAFTAs the film won three: Outstanding British Film, Leading Actor and Adapted Screenplay, with nominations for Best Film and for James McAvoy. A good fit if you want the dictator’s charm built as the source of the danger, not a contrast to it. Not for anyone who would rather not see the torture sequence near the end in full.