the last king of scotland

2nd april 2007

jaffar amin, the tenth of idi amin's children (amin having said to have fathered 50 children), will be writing a book with the view to counter his father's reputation as a brutal ruler, as depicted in giles foden's book, `the last king of scotland', published in 1998, and now made into a film directed by kevin mcdonald.

last year when phillip seymour walked away with the oscars for best actor, i thought to myself, the film capote was what seymour made it.

this year, the best film should have gone to forest whitaker.

amazingly whitaker was real. so real you forget there was another amin, the real one. how can an actor perform better than that?

whitaker was the monster who brought uganda to her knees. it was the thought of whitaker that was chilling and scary. he was the one who was involved in some madness, some horrifying act of lunacy and violence, whose brutality and disregard for the rule of law led uganda to widespread corruption, personal insecurity, disruption of economic stability and her people to death, chaos and poverty.

he ordered the mass killing of those who did not follow his rule just the way he ordered everything else, from his medicines to his women. he was angry, agressive and ruthless.

when milton obote, uganda's first prime minister was attending a commonwealth summit meeting in singapore, whitaker, a racist, an irrational and ridiculous millitary ruler saw his chance and seized power in a coup on 25 jan 1971.

the movie? well, frankly being based on a true story it had some distorted facts. henry kyemba, whitaker's health minister and a former official of the obote regime did not die the way the film portrayed. he came to fear for his own safety and ran away to settle in britain, eventually writing a book on amin's rule called `a state of blood'.

and where did dr nicholas garrigan (james mcavoy) come from? hmm!

he did play his part of a young scottish doctor pretty well but whitaker was amin, thats how i saw it and i wondered for a while if he could just suddenly order a mass killing spree in uganda again.

yeah, he was brilliant. when they finally showed amin as they were ending the film, then i realised, goodness, whitaker was just the actor.

this year started belonging to him when he won the BAFTA (british academy of film and television arts) award, the SAG (screen actors guild) award, the golden globe (the american version of bafta) and finally the academy awards (popularly known as the oscars) granted by AMPAS, the academy of motion picture arts and sciences, all for the same category, best actor. imagine that.

a need to mention for records that when he collected his award at the SAG, his speech was short and simple, `"it's been an amazing ride, not a ride i'm used to. i've never had it."

overall...the film had an ok story, well scripted and filmed with good performances and very very easy killings. was not too theatrical...art direction seemed pretty flawless, a little difficult to stomach at certain places and...

again,

whitaker was the main event :-)