The Last King of Scotland is a 2006 British drama film based on Giles Foden's novel of the same name. It was adapted by screenwriters Peter Morgan and Jeremy Brock and directed by Kevin Macdonald. The film was a co-production between companies from the United Kingdom and the United States, including Fox Searchlight Pictures and Film4.
The Last King of Scotland tells the fictional story of Dr. Nicholas Garrigan (James McAvoy), a young fictional Scottish doctor who travels to Uganda and becomes the personal physician to the dictator Idi Amin (Forest Whitaker). The movie is based on factual events of Amin's rule.
Plot
The film opens in Scotland in 1970 as Nicholas Garrigan (James McAvoy) graduates from medical school. Faced with the dull prospect of joining his bourgeois father in the family's village practice, and in desperation to lead an adventurous life, he randomly selects rural Uganda to work in a missionary clinic run by Dr. David Merrit (Adam Kotz) and his wife Sarah (Gillian Anderson).
Garrigan arrives in Uganda as General Idi Amin (Forest Whitaker) concludes a successful coup d’état to overthrow incumbent president Milton Obote. The two men meet at the scene of a minor car accident, where Garrigan treats the new president's injured hand. Impressed by Amin's charisma and by his vision of an egalitarian golden age for Uganda, Garrigan hesitantly accepts the president's invitation to become his personal physician and to take charge of modernizing Uganda's health care system. Interestingly, Amin guesses that Nicholas is reluctant to leave the missionary clinic because he is attracted to a married woman, thus revealing an immoral character flaw in Nicholas that will become important later on.
Garrigan quickly becomes the president's trusted confidant and adviser. Although he is aware of the shootings and executions going on around Kampala, Garrigan accepts Amin's explanation that cracking down on Obote's insurgent supporters will bring about lasting peace. However, the viewer sees that Garrigan has become an apologist for a repressive regime, and that his privileged lifestyle (which involves living in a spacious modern apartment, driving a brand new Mercedes-Benz car, and attending lavish pool parties at the presidential mansion) is being funded through the economic exploitation of the Ugandan people.
While serving as Amin's family physician, Garrigan discovers that the polygamous leader has ostracized the youngest of his three wives, Kay (Kerry Washington). Amin believes that she is an unfit wife because she has given birth to an epileptic son, Mackenzie. In the course of treating Mackenzie's condition, Garrigan comes to admire Kay's beauty, independence, and strength of spirit. Despite her marriage to Amin, the two become lovers.
Garrigan loses faith in Amin as he witnesses the president's increasing paranoia, brutality, and xenophobia. Amins paranoia is only increased when he survives an assassination attempt. He only survived because he was driving in Nicholases car, not his presidential one, which is shot to ribbons. A dangerously de-railed Amin proclaims "They could not have killed me! I know when I die! I saw it in a dream!" When the dictator decides to expel Uganda's Asian minorities, and the British Foreign Office shows him photographic evidence that Amin's brutal regime is perpetrating mass genocide against the Ugandan people, Garrigan decides that he has seen enough. He wants to return to Scotland, but when Amin learns of his intentions, he confiscates Garrigan's British passport and replaces it with a Ugandan one. When Garrigan appeals for help to the Foreign Office, its officials tell him that he has been so complicit with the regime's atrocities that they will allow him to leave Uganda on one condition: Garrigan must use his role as Amin's personal physician to assassinate the dictator.
Garrigan's situation is further complicated when Kay tells him that she has become pregnant with his child. If her pregnancy becomes known to Amin, she will be murdered for her infidelity, so she begs Garrigan to abort the fetus. Delayed by Amin's command that he attend a press conference for Western journalists, Garrigan fails to meet her at the appointed time, so she instead seeks out a primitive abortion in a nearby village. When Garrigan searches for her, he finds only her cadaver, savagely mutilated by Amin's forces. As he falls retching to his knees, Garrigan finally confronts the palpable inhumanity of Amin's regime. He decides that he must atone for his complicity and avenge Kay's death by assassinating the dictator.
After a hijacked Air France aircraft lands at Entebbe International Airport seeking asylum for the Palestinian hijackers on board, Amin and other state officials rush to the airport, taking Garrigan along. Here, one of Amin's bodyguards discovers Garrigan's plot to kill the president by poisoning him, under the ruse of giving him headache pills. Uncovered as a traitor and an assassin, Garrigan is beaten by Amin's henchmen. Confronting Garrigan, Amin discloses that he has been aware of the doctor's sexual relationship with his youngest wife, and tells the doctor that his village traditionally punishes infidelity by hanging the culprit from a tree by his skin until he is dead. Amin also declares that Garrigan's own death will be the only true thing that Garrigan will have accomplished in a life guided by falsehood, deceit and irresponsibility.
Amin's henchmen pierce Garrigan's chest with meat hooks and string him up while Amin looks on. When they temporarily leave Garrigan broken and bleeding on the floor to attend to the release of a group of hostages, Garrigan's medical colleague Dr. Junju (David Oyelowo) comes to his rescue. In exchange for Garrigan's promise to return to Britain and tell the world the truth about Amin's regime, Junju dresses Garrigan and wipes the blood from his face so that he can sneak aboard a plane amidst the group of freed hostages. At the film's conclusion, Garrigan's plane soars into the skies, leaving a furious Amin behind. For his act of compassion in helping Garrigan escape, Junju is shot dead.
The film closes with archival footage of the real Amin and the following text: "Forty-eight hours after some hostages were released, Israeli forces stormed Entebbe and liberated all but one of the remaining hostages. International public opinion turned against Amin for good. When he was finally overthrown in 1979, jubilant crowds poured onto the streets. His regime had killed more than 300,000 Ugandans and expelled tens of thousands of Asians who had made Uganda their home for years. Amin died in exile in Saudi Arabia on 16 August 2003.
Nobody knows if that was the day he dreamed about."
Release
The Last King of Scotland received a limited release in the United States on 27 September 2006, with a UK release on 12 January 2007, a French release on 14 February 2007, and a German release on 15 March 2007. In the United States the film was rated "R" by the MPAA for strong violence, gruesome images, nudity, and strong language.
In the United States and Canada, the film earned $17,606,684 at the box office. In the United Kingdom, the film took $11,131,918. Its combined worldwide gross was $48,362,207.[2]
The film was released on DVD in North America on 17 April 2007.
Reception
| Academy Awards record |
| 1. Best Actor (Forest Whitaker) |
| Golden Globe Awards record |
| 1. Best Actor - Drama (Forest Whitaker) |
| BAFTA Awards record |
| 1. Best British Film |
| 2. Best Actor (Forest Whitaker) |
| 3. Best Adapted Screenplay |
Whitaker received outstanding critical acclaim for his performance as dictator Idi Amin in the film. He won the Best Actor award at the Academy Awards, the Golden Globes, the Screen Actors Guild and the BAFTAs, in addition to awards from the Broadcast Film Critics Association, New York Film Critics Circle, Los Angeles Film Critics Association, the National Board of Review and many other critics awards, for a total of at least 23 major awards, with at least one more nomination.
The film was received well in Uganda, where it premiered two days before Whitaker won the Best Actor award.[3]
The film received a 2007 BAFTA Award for Best British Film and the BAFTA award for Best Adapted Screenplay, in addition to receiving nominations for Best Film. James McAvoy was nominated for Best Supporting Actor.
Historical accuracy
While the character of Idi Amin and the events surrounding him in the movie are mostly factual, Garrigan is a fictional character. His story is loosely based on events in the life of English-born Bob Astles. Like the novel on which it is based, the film mixes fiction with real events in Ugandan history to give an impression of Amin and Uganda under his authoritarian rule. While the basic events of Amin's life are followed, the film often departs from actual history in the details of particular events.
In real life and in the book, Kay Amin was made pregnant by her lover Dr. Mbalu Mukasa. She died during a botched abortion operation by Mukasa, who subsequently committed suicide.[citation needed] Bob Astles, upon whom the character of Dr. Nicholas Garrigan is based, believes that her body was cut up not on Amin's orders, but by Mukasa while attempting to hide it. Amin never had a son named Campbell.
Despite the wording of the film's coda, three hostages died during Operation Entebbe. The body of a fourth hostage, 75-year-old Dora Bloch, who was killed by Ugandan army officers at a nearby hospital was eventually returned to Israel and buried with state honors in Jerusalem's Mount of Quietudes.[4]
Notes
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