There are some movies that rise above averageness because of a single extraordinary performance. It is easier to give a great perforamnce in a great movie than it is to give a great performance in an average movie where less is expected. The first time I noticed a performance of this kind was in The Accused. Had Jodie Foster not played the lead role as a rape victim in that film, I would have dismissed it as a standard TV-level court procedural. But Foster's performance was so strong, so real, that I cared about her. More than anything the by-the-numbers directrion and script had done, Foster's performance made the movie worth seeing.
Forest Whitaker's performance in The Last King of Scotland is like that. He not only steals every scene he is in, he gives the scenes a reason for existance. Whitaker has been nominated for Best Actor and I hope he wins, as he deserves to. He plays Idi Amin, the brutal dictator of Uganda, who, as the closing titles tell us, killed over 300,000 of his own countrymen. Having almost no knowlege of the real Amin or of Ugandan history, I can't detect how accurate the movie or Whiatker is (although actor and subject bear a striking physical resemblance). But enough is on the screen to give us a full arc of the character, as he goes from prolitariat idealist to slightly excentric recluse to completly paranoia and insanity.
Had the film been a biopic of Amin (and with a better director) it could have been a study of power on the level of Citizen Kane or The Godfather. But unfortantley the movie revolves around a smamy, immature jerk. The film opens newly graduated MD Nicholas Garrigan (James McAvoy) leaves his native to get away from his parents. Joining a UNICEF like orginization Uganda, he coincidentally is called to treat Amin when his hand is lightly wounded in a car accident. Amin has a surprising love for the Scotland and the two strike up what appears to be a friendship, and Garrigan eventually become personal physcian to Amin and his family. Slowly, the doctor begins to realize that Amin's warm personality may be masking a deep insecurity underneath, that will eventually manifest itself in violent ways.
The movie's central flaw is that Amin is the not the protagonist of his own story. Whitaker is in a way so good that he damages the movie he's in, drawing attention to how boring and obnoxious Garrigan really is. Worse, Kevin McDonald expects us to identify and care about the doctor. James McAvoy's performance might also be a problem, perhaps another, tougher actor (John Hannah?) might have been able to convey the doctor's naivete while still making somewhat likable and less of dolt.
But the movie is still worth seeing, just for Whitaker's performance. What a nice guy Amin was- the life of the party, an amazing orator, a charming statesmen. The fact that we like Amin makes his growing paranoia more and more insiduous- sort of like finding out your high school class president was a serial killer. Even at the end, Amin may not have an inheritnley evil person, but someone who was acting as only he knew how under circumstances he never should have had to deal with. Perhaps if he had earned power instead of been given it, he would have been a really great man.
The Last King of Scotland (2006)