DIRECTED BY: KEVIN MACDONALD

STARRING: FOREST WHITTAKER, JAMES MCAVOY.

Released at Cinemas: January 12th

Forest Whitaker provides a colossally powerful and Oscar-ready performance here, as he becomes all-powerful Ugandan dictator Idi Amin. This is the gripping first film from documentarian Kevin Macdonald ('Touching the Void', 'One Day in September'), another man who refuses to disappoint. Based on a novel by Giles Foden, 'The Last King of Scotland' views Amin's rise to power through the eyes of a Western Doctor, Nicholas Garrigan, who goes to Africa to leave boredom firmly on foreign shores, and swiftly becomes head physician and key advisor to Amin. Hypnotised by his charming and charismatic nature, Garrigan does not recognise Amin's emerging evil until it is too late. Whittaker has stated the importance of combining a commanding presence with a sensitive realism in his characterisation of Amin, a figure who must appear simultaneously loveable and loathable. He almost embodies this amiable madman role, and the wickedly dry humour set up in the film's opening section doubles the fear factor of Amin’s later despotism. The Last King of Scotland explores the ease with which absolute power can corrupt, as well as the complexities of figures such as Idi Amin. Though it may be criticised as using a typical Hollywood (and potentially Imperialist) tendency to view African history through white eyes, this does nothing to diminish the psychological force and impact of the performances here.