'Last King' is lazy

We've all seen "The Last King of Scotland" before. We've seen it in a dozen other films released at this time every year, for which critics reserve words like "brutal" and "powerful." Like so many others before it, the film is a direct appeal to Oscar voters, but it comes up dry. In attempting to rely on the gravity of a real-life tragedy, the film winds up with no emotional impact. Bookended by the tagline "based on real events" and a set of solemn "what really happened after the movie ends" statements, director Kevin Macdonald's film tackles a sad period of modern African history with exceptional laziness, replacing honest exploration with shameless manipulation.

The film focuses on General Idi Amin, who, as president of Uganda in the 1970s, massacred an estimated 300,000 members of various ethnic, religious and political groups in his own country. His charisma masked the horrors of his regime to the world. Oscillating almost schizophrenically between effortless charmer and bloodthirsty murderer, Amin is an irresistible subject—but one this film isn't quite sure how to address. "Last King" takes a while to find its groove, bouncing uncomfortably from pocket-sized family drama to heroic travelogue to forbidden romance story in its first 20 minutes. The film finally settles on something resembling that distressingly racist relic of classic Hollywood in which the suffering of an exoticized developing world is conveyed via good-looking white people.

The story centers on James McAvoy's fictional Nicholas Garrigan, a freshlygraduated Scottish medical student who becomes Amin's personal physician after repairing the dictator's hand in a chance encounter. Despite the theatrics and cinematic color Amin's story would itself carry, Macdonald uses Garrigan as a medium through which to explore the tyrant. The exploration itself is far from original — it's idiotic, even.

The film's lazy writing lets the characters fall into cliches. In an opening scene, Garrigan picks his first post-medical school destination by spinning a globe and landing his finger on Uganda. Then, Amin and Garrigan become (surprise!) surrogate father and son for one another. The dictator's hedonism, from his hankering for sports cars to his bloodlust, is initially alluring to the spoiled Scot, but also acts as a warning for Garrigan, especially when he is confronted by his own (gasp!) ethical lapses.

Unsurprisingly, Garrigan only begins to recognize the truth about Amin when it is too late, and he descends into a spiral of (yawn) sex, violence and deceit. As the absurd, overcooked twists pile up, it becomes increasingly clear that the filmmakers' real concerns lie in having the relationship between Amin and Garrigan come full circle. In Macdonald's most brazenly manipulative stroke, the paternal back-and-forth between Amin and Garrigan makes it difficult for the audience to see the true horror in the dictator's regime; we only learn of the mass persecutions when the Scotsman does. Just as Amin brainwashes Garrigan, the filmmakers make the audience believe that the eight terrible years of the dictator's reign were really all about an immature doctor.

Macdonald's film fails to capitalize on the talents of Forest Whitaker, who plays Amin. As the story staggers toward its ending, the focus turns more and more toward Garrigan's bizarre escape from Uganda and away from Amin's deteriorating control over the national situation. The confusing final act skips clumsily from "Apocalypse Now"-style psychedelic freak-outs, to a paper-thin political thriller, to one undeservedly gruesome torture scene. But it is all for naught, as the film's ending substitutes for any meaningful conclusion the lazy man's surrogate for artistic legitimacy: ambiguity. Pros: General subject area is interesting. Cons: Writing and plot are cliche; ending is a cop-out.