1-17-07, 8:50 am

The Last King of Scotland Directed by Kevin Macdonald

As the Scottish nationalists stand poised to take power at Holyrood after 300 years of the UK union, it seems somewhat ironic that this week sees the release of a film called The Last King Of Scotland.

Ironic? Because, although it features the fortunes of a Scotsman and is directed by Kevin Macdonald, it happens to be about another anti-colonial cousin, General Idi Amin Dada.

You remember him - the former British soldier whom the 1971 Tory government deemed suitable to install as the dictator of Uganda to save it from the clutches of 'communist' Dr Milton Obote.

In fact, Obote wasn't a communist. He had simply voiced socialist sentiments, which, given Britain's track record in its former colonies, is like signing your own death warrant.

As the British Foreign Office said, Amin was 'a splendid type and a good footballer.' Their film spokesman is more specific. 'He has a firm hand, something the Africans understand.'

Such a story would provide great stuff for a documentary and, given that Macdonald's back catalogue contains films like Touching the Void and One Day in September, that's what you might expect. Wrong.

But, although The Last King is more visual than narrative, Macdonald has employed all his documentary skills to make a fine first foray into feature films with this adaptation of Giles Foden's 1998 novel.

It stars James McAvoy as Nicholas Garrigan, a young doctor who is introduced to us while having what amounts to a last supper with his strict Presbyterian family before he decides to chance his hand at doctoring in Uganda.

Obviously, he doesn't read the papers, since he seems to know nothing about his destination. We see him on a country bus, before losing his cherry to an African woman at the bus stop.

Then, as if to compound his selfishness, he arrives at the surgery to chat up his boss's wife (Gillian Anderson) before deciding to accept the 'offer' to become Amin's private physician.

Amin is impressed when the young man bandages his hand after a mild sprain. The Scot is clearly captivated by the general's rhetoric about building a new society. And why not? From the moment that Forest Whitaker jumps on the stage dressed as General Amin, he becomes omnipresent and provides a peerless performance of a very powerful personality.

Whitaker is simply stunning and helps to hide the fact that the rest of the story begins to descend into drivel, a trend summed up when the not-so-naive Nicholas thinks that nobody might notice that he's shagging one of Amin's wives.

As I said, it's fanciful, because the character of Garrigan has been created to simply provide a foil for Amin - the devil incarnate tempting the innocent from the path of righteousness.

In fact, he hasn't really been in search of anything but pleasure and only slowly opens his eyes to reality as it impacts on his life. The horror increases until it becomes unbearable.

In short, this is another neocolonial view of black suffering seen through a white man's eye, with the only opposition seeming to come, incredibly, from the staff at the British embassy.

The Foreign Office wasn't so much concerned with Amin's strong-arm tactics, it was his destabilising role internationally that was increasingly embarrassing, especially when he exiled the Asian population to Britain.

To emphasise the fact, Peter Morgan and Jeremy Brock's screenplay departs from the original denouement by including a scene that they nicked from The Man Called Horse (1970).

Still, it has some very fine performances from the supporting cast and Anthony Dod Mantle's cinematography successfully captures the magnificent ruggedness of Uganda.

Why did Amin call himself The Last King of Scotland? Well, apart from claiming that he loved wearing a kilt, he publicly proclaimed that, after liberating Africa, he'd free Scotland.

Fortunately, Tanzania helped to bring that nightmarish scenario to an end when it aided the Ugandan opposition to overthrow Amin in 1979. The beaten dictator fled to Saudi Arabia, where he died in 2003.

I doubt whether Scottish nationalists will take this self-styled king to their heart as they did Mel Gibson's Braveheart.

From Morning Star