Movie Reviews (such as they are)

Friday, August 31, 2007

The Last King of Scotland

You must have heard of The Last King of Scotland? It's the one where Forest Whitaker plays Idi Amin, and he won an Oscar for it. Course you have. It's based on a true story, y'know.*

White just-graduated doctor goes to Uganda to help people in bad conditions. He meets new president Idi Amin and fixes his sprained wrist. Amin signs him up as his own personal physician/adviser. The two develop an unusual friendship. Of course, something is sure to go wrong, especially when young white boy takes a fancy to the president's wife...

This kept me gripped and laughing quite a bit for the first hour. The second hour went a bit more slowly for me, as it became a bit more "by the numbers". Still good, but less interesting, I felt. (The wife disagreed, though.)

The acting and directing were first-rate. It was directed by the guy who did Touching The Void, Kevin Macdonald.

A good film that is well worth your time, but it was not quite the experience I was expecting/hoping. Still, let's give it a respectable 70 points.

* I felt cheated when I watched the DVD's supplementary material and discovered that this particular white-boy doctor never really existed. And much of the stuff didn't really happen. So it's based on a true story in the sense that Idi Amin was the president of Uganda, then? LIARS!

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