"Bird" is the first movie I really remember Forest Whitaker standing out in, and I've been a fan every since. "The Last King of Scotland" did not let me down.
I don't know how historical this story is, but the relationship between Idi Amin (Whitaker) and the Scottish doctor Nicholas Garrigan (James McAvoy) is a microcosm of the little I have read about Amin and how he treated the people close to him. Amin likes Garrigan immediately and takes him from the rural hospital he is working at to the capitol to be his personal and family physician. Their relationship ranges from "You are my closest advisor" to "you are only my doctor."
Nicholas is a bit of a randy lad (with an extra soft spot for married women), but he is also compassionate. When he becomes involved with Amin's wife Kay (Kerry Washington), who is exiled because one of her sons is epileptic, I think there is as much friendliness and compassion in his initial interest as lust.
Whitaker is charming and frightening as Idi Amin and deserves the Oscar nomination, though I haven't seen any of the competitors except "Half Nelson" for which Ryan Gosling was nominated.
James McAvoy's Nicholas Garrigan is grand as a clueless young man on an adventure as much to get away from his father as to help the people of Uganda as a physician. Though he is the main character I would have liked to have seen a bit more of his psychology. For one thing I can't imagine how he was able to ignore everything going on around him, i.e. the disappearances and deaths.
This is a movie worth seeing, and like "Notes on a Scandal" the novel is now on my reading list.
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