The Last King of Scotland had its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival on 1 September 2006, and was released in the United Kingdom on 12 January 2007, and in Germany on 15 March 2007, by Fox Searchlight Pictures. The film received positive reviews and grossed $48.4 million on a $6 million budget. For his performance as Idi Amin, Whitaker won an Academy Award for Best Actor, among other accolades.
Plot
In 1970, Nicholas Garrigan graduates from the University of Edinburgh Medical School. With dull prospects at home, he decides to seek adventure abroad by working at a missionary clinic in Uganda run by David Merrit and his wife, Sarah. After Garrigan arrives in Uganda, General Idi Amin overthrows President Milton Obote in a coup d'état. Amin gives a well-received speech, but Sarah is pessimistic. Garrigan is called to a car accident involving Amin and treats Amin's hand. During the incident, Garrigan takes a gun and shoots a mortally wounded cow when no-one else is willing to perform euthanasia. Initially hostile to Garrigan, Amin warms up to him after discovering he is Scottish due to his xenophilia for the Scots. Delighted by Garrigan's initiative, Amin exchanges clothing with him and subsequently invites Garrigan to serve as his personal physician and lead efforts to modernise the Ugandan healthcare system.
While working for Amin, Garrigan becomes a trusted confidant and is entrusted with a wider range of duties, including matters of state. Despite being dismayed by acts of government repression, Garrigan accepts Amin's explanation that cracking down on political opposition will bring lasting peace to Uganda. Garrigan eventually learns that Amin has ostracized the youngest of his three wives, Kay, because she has given birth to an epileptic son, Mackenzie. When treating Mackenzie, Garrigan and Kay start to form a relationship. Eventually, Garrigan becomes disillusioned by Amin as he witnesses increasing amounts of paranoia, murders and xenophobia. He attempts to announce his intention to return home, but is rebuffed by Amin. While at a party, after doing his best to evade a go-go dancer who is assigned to become his lover, he and Kay have sex, and she says he must find a way to leave Uganda. Amin secretly replaces Garrigan's British passport with a Ugandan one to prevent him from escaping, which leads Garrigan to seek help from Stone, the local Foreign Office representative. Garrigan is told by Stone he will be secretly transported out of Uganda if he assassinates Amin, which Garrigan refuses.
In 1972, Amin orders the expulsion of Asians from Uganda over Garrigan's protests. This creates a labor shortage that tanks Uganda's economy. Kay informs Garrigan that she has become pregnant with his child. Aware that Amin will murder her for infidelity if he discovers this, she begs Garrigan for a secret abortion. Delayed by Amin's command that he attend a press conference with Western journalists, Garrigan fails to meet Kay at the appointed time. Kay concludes she has been abandoned and seeks out a primitive abortion in a nearby village, where she is apprehended by Amin's forces. Garrigan finds her dismembered corpse on an autopsy table. Distraught, he decides to kill Amin. A hijacked aircraft is flown to Entebbe Airport by pro-Palestinian hijackers seeking asylum. Amin, sensing a major publicity opportunity, rushes to the scene, taking Garrigan along. At the airport, one of Amin's bodyguards discovers Garrigan's plot to poison Amin under the ruse of giving him pills for a headache. Garrigan is beaten by Amin's henchmen before Amin arrives and discloses he is aware of the relationship with Kay. As punishment, Garrigan's chest is pierced with meat hooks before he is hanged by his skin.
Amin arranges a plane for the release of non-Israeli passengers, and the torturers leave Garrigan unconscious on the floor while they relax in another room. Garrigan's medical colleague, Dr. Junju, takes advantage of the opportunity to rescue him. He urges Garrigan to tell the world the truth about Amin's regime, asserting that the world will believe Garrigan because he is white. Junju gives Garrigan his own jacket, enabling him to mingle unnoticed with the crowd of freed hostages and board the plane. When the torturers discover Garrigan's absence, Junju is killed for aiding in the escape. The Entebbe incident irreparably ruins Amin's reputation in the international community, and in 1979 he decides to invade Tanzania, which counterattacks and captures Kampala, overthrowing him. He lives the rest of his life in exile in Saudi Arabia until his death in 2003.
While the character of Idi Amin and some of the events surrounding him in the film are mostly based on fact, Garrigan is a fictional character. Foden has acknowledged that one real-life figure who contributed to the character Garrigan was English-born Bob Astles, who worked with Amin.[5] Another real-life figure who has been mentioned in connection with Garrigan is Scottish doctor Wilson Carswell.[6] Like the novel on which it is based, the film mixes fiction with real events to give an impression of Amin and Uganda under his rule. While the basic arc of Amin's rule is followed, the events in the film depart from both actual history and the plot and characters in Foden's novel.
In real life and in the book, Kay Amin was impregnated by her lover, who was a Ugandan physician (given a different name in the book than in real life). She died during a botched abortion performed by him, and he subsequently died by suicide.[7] Astles said in a lengthy interview for The Times with the journalist Paul Vallely that her body was dismembered by her lover so it could be hidden and was then sewn back together on Amin's orders.[8]Henry Kyemba, who served as Amin's Minister of Health before defecting to Britain in 1977, stated that the grotesque scene where Kay Amin's arms have been sewn onto to her corpse in place of her legs and vice-versa, never happened.[9]Forest Whitaker, who played Amin in the film and researched his life before taking the part, likewise stated this scene is "not true".[9] The American critic Lesley Marx wrote that the film reduces Kay Amin down from a woman to "a plot point", an "object of the gaze" first in the eroticism of her body, which attracts Garrigan, and then to the grotesque form that her body is reduced to, which horrifies him.[9] The stories about the way that Kay Amin's corpse was said to have been mutilated featured prominently in popular history books about Amin, through the British anthropologist Mark Leopold noted that none of these authors are specialists in Ugandan history.[10]
Leopold wrote none of the popular history books about Idi Amin are reliable as such books commonly claim that Amin's people, the Kakwa, are cannibals and that Amin himself was a cannibal despite the lack of any evidence to support these claims.[11] The claim that Amin was a cannibal was first made by Kyemba in his 1977 book A State of Blood: The Inside Story of Idi Amin.[12] In his book, Kyemba proudly wrote that he was a Muganda aristocrat whose family had served the Baganda kings for centuries and Leopold noted that Kyemba made no effort to hide his contempt for people from northern Uganda and especially from the West Nile province (Amin's home province).[12] Kyemba wrote that the Kakwa were an especially savage people who engaged in cannibalism and other "blood rituals" and alleged that Amin told him that he routinely ate human flesh.[12] Leopold charged that Kyemba's account reflected the prejudices of people from southern Uganda against people from northern Uganda, and that during all his time as an anthropologist in Uganda he had seen no evidence that the Kakwa practice cannibalism and the other sinister "blood rituals" alleged by Kyemba.[13] Amin's former commanding officer in the King's African Rifles, Iain Grahame, in his 1980 book Amin and Uganda: A personal memoir, strongly implied that Amin was an cannibal, saying it was well known that the Kakwa along with people from the West Nile province in general were cannibals.[14] Leopold wrote that Grahame was seeking to appeal to traditional British prejudices against Africans in order to sell his book with his dark hints that Amin was doing something unnatural to the bodies of the people he killed (Grahame does not accuse Amin directly of cannibalism since that would have led to awkward questions as why he did nothing as Amin's commanding officer).[14] Kyemba and Grahame both served as the historical consultants on The Last King of Scotland and much of the picture of Amin in the film is based upon their memories of him.[12] Despite the involvement of both Kyemba and Grahame in the film, there is no mention of cannibalism on the part of Amin in The Last King of Scotland.
Amin never had a son named Campbell. In the book, Amin's Scotphilia is explained by the Scots officers he served under in the King's African Rifles while in the film it is presented merely as another of Amin's eccentricities.[15] Foden in writing The Last King of Scotland stated that in Amin was deeply influenced by his service in the King's African Rifles, which led him to have "an Oedipal relationship with the former colonial power".[16] Foden added that Amin's much publicised support for Scottish independence alongside with his demand (which was apparently serious) that he become the king of Scotland reflected both his admiration and hatred for the United Kingdom.[16] Marx noted that in the film, this aspect of Amin is downplayed and his desire to be the king of Scotland is presented as an eccentric gesture that might possibly reflected insanity on his part.[15] However, the film is correct in depicting Amin as making outlandish and often bizarre statements such his frequently stated wish to marry Queen Elizabeth II. Amin was well known for making outrageous statements in his press conferences and speeches, which partly reflected his narcissism as he loved being the center of world media attention and partly as a way to deflect attention from the collapsing Ugandan economy.[17]
In the book, Garrigan is an idealistic young Scots doctor who goes to Uganda who goes to Uganda in 1970 on assignment as a part of a British foreign aid program while in the film Garrigan goes to Uganda on a whim as his finger just happens to land on Uganda when he spins a globe.[18] The cinematic version of Garrigan is far more sexually aggressive then the Garrigan of the novel as the Garrigan of the film regards Ugandan girls as easy to pick up for sex and is shown as being amply rewarded for his view of Ugandan woman.[19] The Garrigan of the novel by contrast is both fascinated and repulsed by sex owning to his sexually repressive Presbyterian background.[20] In the novel, Garrigan's father plays a more prominent role in the plot and is portrayed as a humanist doctor who tells his son "The most important thing is to minimise the harm you do to those around you."[16] In the film, Garrigan's father appears briefly at the beginning of the film and is portrayed as a stern, cold Calvinist and an unloving father whose lack of affection causes Garrigan to seek a surrogate father in the form of Idi Amin.[16] Garrigan of the film is shown as being far rash and impulsive than the Garrigan of the book, who has sex with Kay Amin despite knowing full well the dangers posed to both himself and her, a decision that Marx described as "an extraordinarily and unbelievably rash act, even for someone as fatuous as the film’s Nicholas".[16] The Garrigan of the film is portrayed as far more shallow and superficial than the Garrigan of the book as Marx notes that the scene where Idi Amin tells Garrigan that his death "will be the first real thing that will happen to you" rings true.[21] The Garrigan of the book is more morally conflicted as he admits to feelings of cruelty and admires Amin precisely because of his brutality as Amin acts out everything that a part of him really wishes to do to other people, through he also feels much guilt over the dark side of his personality.[22]
Contrary to the wording of the film's coda stating, "48 hours later, Israeli Forces stormed Entebbe and liberated all but one of the hostages", three hostages died during Operation Entebbe. The body of a fourth hostage, 75-year-old Dora Bloch, who was killed by Uganda Army officers at a nearby hospital in retaliation for Israel's actions, was eventually returned to Israel.[23] The murder of Dora Bloch is depicted accurately in the book but not mentioned at all in the film. Also when the non-Israeli hostages were released, they are seen being flown out of Entebbe, Uganda to Paris, France on an Antonov An-12 aircraft, but in real life the non-Israeli hostages were flown to Paris on a chartered Air FranceBoeing 747.[24][25] In the book, Garrigan is imprisoned and tortured in Uganda, escapes to a forest, and is rescued from near-death by the soldiers of the Tanzania People's Defence Force who overthrew Amin in 1979.[26] In the film, Garrigan flees Uganda in 1976 on the plane that flew out the non-Israeli hostages just before the Entebbe raid.[19] Marx accused the film-makers of racism in making this change as she noted that the film's epilogue states that "world opinion" turned against Amin after the Entebbe raid, which led to the overthrow of Amin in 1979.[27] Marx noted that in reality, Uganda invaded Tanzania in October 1978 and following the repulse of the Ugandan forces, the Tanzania People's Defence Force invaded Uganda in January 1979 and overthrew Amin in April of that year.[27] Marx accused the film-makers as promoting a white savior story since audiences are led to believe that Garrigan after his escape from Uganda was the one who turned "world opinion" against Amin, and thus caused his overthrow, when in reality Amin was overthrown by his fellow Africans.[27] Marx noted that is true that the regime of Idi Amin was infamous for its atrocities against its own people (which was well known long before the Entebbe raid), but this did not cause the downfall of Amin.[27] Marx also noted that, in the film, there is a scene not in the book, where Garrigan argues with Stone, the smug and duplicitous official of the British High Commission, who warns him that Amin is a bloodthirsty tyrant.[22] Garrigan accuses Stone of racism by saying that Uganda is making progress under Amin and then adds "this is Africa. You meet violence with violence. Anything else and you’re dead", a statement that does acknowledge Amin governs Uganda via brutal methods.[22] However, Garrigan's case for Amin is undermined when everything that Stone says about Amin is proven to be true, and he himself barely escapes Uganda.[28] Marx argued that the sequence of events seems to be suggesting that people like Stone with his dismissive view of Ugandans and by extension all Africans know Africa the best.[27]
According to Foden, the film's depiction of Amin is comparable with the Shakespearean character Macbeth, whom he had in mind when writing the novel.[29]
Release
The Last King of Scotland received a limited release in the United States on 27 September 2006, a UK release on 12January 2007, a French release on 14February 2007, and a German release on 15 March 2007. 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.[30]
Reception
Critical response
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The Last King of Scotland has an approval rating of 87% on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 183 reviews, with an average score of 7.3/10. The website's critical consensus states: "Forest Whitaker's performance as real-life megalomaniac dictator Idi Amin powers this fictionalized political thriller, a blunt and brutal tale about power and corruption".[31] At Metacritic, the film has a score of 74 out of 100 based on 36 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[32]
Forest Whitaker’s performance as Idi Amin was universally praised, with Alex von Tunzelmann observing that, while the film sidesteps many of the worst aspects of Amin’s regime, “it is saved by Forest Whitaker’s towering performance”.
Criticism of narrative framing and historical accuracy, particularly the use of a white fictional character, Dr. Nicholas Garrigan, to explore black history. The film “was criticised for using a white character to explore black history,” which undercuts its portrayal, especially as it skirts over some of Amin’s gravest crimes.[33]
As of 2025, Forest Whitaker's portrayal from The Last King of Scotland is one of only two performances of non-fictional leaders (Helen Mirren from 2006's The Queen being the other) in a leading role and is the only lead actor to ever sweep the rarest achievements known as "The Big Four" critics awards (LAFCA, NBR, NYFCC, NSFC) as well as win the Oscar, BAFTA, Critics' Choice, Golden Globe, and SAG awards in the same year.
The film was received well in Uganda, where it premiered two days before Whitaker won the Academy Award.[34]
↑ Pells, Rachael (10 October 2014). "Douglas Carswell profile". independent.com. Archived from the original on 18 June 2022. Retrieved 13 October 2014.
↑ David, Saul (2015). Operation Thunderbolt: The Entebbe Raid – The Most Audacious Hostage Rescue Mission in History. Back Bay Books. ISBN978-0316245395.
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