The Last King of Scotland

Welcome to In The Balcony. We hope you enjoy your visit.

You're currently viewing our forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our community, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile, sending personal messages, and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free. Plus, you'll be eligible for the monthly $1 million prize. (Not really.)

Join our community!

If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features:

The Last King of Scotland
Topic Started: Jun 14 2009, 12:55 PM (41 Views)
MovieLover12	Jun 14 2009, 12:55 PM Post #1
Balcony Gang, Foist Class Posts: 3,895 Group: Members Member #531 Joined: July 29, 2008	One of the best movies I have ever seen: The film opens in Scotland in 1970 as Nicholas Garrigan (James McAvoy) graduates from medical school. Faced with the dull prospect of joining his bourgeois father in the family's village practice, and in desperation to lead an adventurous life, he randomly selects rural Uganda to work in a missionary clinic run by Dr. David Merrit (Adam Kotz) and his wife Sarah (Gillian Anderson). Garrigan arrives in Uganda as General Idi Amin (Forest Whitaker) concludes a successful coup d’état to overthrow incumbent president Milton Obote. The two men meet at the scene of a minor car accident, where Garrigan treats the new president's injured hand. Impressed by Amin's charisma and by his vision of an egalitarian golden age for Uganda, Garrigan hesitantly accepts the president's invitation to become his personal physician and to take charge of modernizing Uganda's health care system. Interestingly, Amin guesses that Nicholas is reluctant to leave the missionary clinic because he is attracted to a married woman, thus revealing an immoral character flaw in Nicholas that will become important later on. Garrigan quickly becomes the president's trusted confidant and adviser. Although he is aware of the shootings and executions going on around Kampala, Garrigan accepts Amin's explanation that cracking down on Obote's insurgent supporters will bring about lasting peace. However, the viewer sees that Garrigan has become an apologist for a repressive regime, and that his privileged lifestyle (which involves living in a spacious modern apartment, driving a brand new Mercedes-Benz car, and attending lavish pool parties at the presidential mansion) is being funded through the economic exploitation of the Ugandan people. While serving as Amin's family physician, Garrigan discovers that the polygamous leader has ostracized the youngest of his three wives, Kay (Kerry Washington). Amin believes that she is an unfit wife because she has given birth to an epileptic son, Mackenzie. In the course of treating Mackenzie's condition, Garrigan comes to admire Kay's beauty, independence, and strength of spirit. Despite her marriage to Amin, the two become lovers. Garrigan loses faith in Amin as he witnesses the president's increasing paranoia, brutality, and xenophobia. When the dictator decides to expel Uganda's Asian minorities, and the British Foreign Office shows him photographic evidence that Amin's brutal regime is perpetrating mass genocide against the Ugandan people, Garrigan decides that he has seen enough. He wants to return to Scotland, but when Amin learns of his intentions, he confiscates Garrigan's British passport and replaces it with a Ugandan one. When Garrigan appeals for help to the Foreign Office, its officials tell him that he has been so complicit with the regime's atrocities that they will allow him to leave Uganda on one condition: Garrigan must use his role as Amin's personal physician to assassinate the dictator. Garrigan's situation is further complicated when Kay tells him that she has become pregnant with his child. If her pregnancy becomes known to Amin, she will be murdered for her infidelity, so she begs Garrigan to abort the fetus. Delayed by Amin's command that he attend a press conference for Western journalists, Garrigan fails to meet her at the appointed time, so she instead seeks out a primitive abortion in a nearby village. When Garrigan searches for her, he finds only her cadaver, savagely mutilated by Amin's forces. As he falls retching to his knees, Garrigan finally confronts the palpable inhumanity of Amin's regime. He decides that he must atone for his complicity and avenge Kay's death by assassinating the dictator. After a hijacked Air France aircraft lands at Entebbe International Airport seeking asylum for the Palestinian hijackers on board, Amin and other state officials rush to the airport, taking Garrigan along. Here, one of Amin's bodyguards discovers Garrigan's plot to kill the president by poisoning him, under the ruse of giving him headache pills. Uncovered as a traitor and an assassin, Garrigan is beaten by Amin's henchmen. Confronting Garrigan, Amin discloses that he has been aware of the doctor's sexual relationship with his youngest wife, and tells the doctor that his village traditionally punishes infidelity by hanging the culprit from a tree by his skin until he is dead. Amin also declares that Garrigan's own death will be the only true thing that Garrigan will have accomplished in a life guided by falsehood, deceit and irresponsibility. Amin's henchmen pierce Garrigan's chest with meat hooks and string him up while Amin looks on. When they temporarily leave Garrigan broken and bleeding on the floor to attend to the release of a group of hostages, Garrigan's medical colleague Dr. Junju (David Oyelowo) comes to his rescue. In exchange for Garrigan's promise to return to Britain and tell the world the truth about Amin's regime, Junju dresses Garrigan and wipes the blood from his face so that he can sneak aboard a plane amidst the group of freed hostages. At the film's conclusion, Garrigan's plane soars into the skies, leaving a furious Amin behind. For his act of compassion in helping Garrigan escape, Junju is shot dead. The film closes with archival footage of the real Amin and the following text: "Forty-eight hours after some hostages were released, Israeli forces stormed Entebbe and liberated all but one of the remaining hostages. International public opinion turned against Amin for good. When he was finally overthrown in 1979, jubilant crowds poured onto the streets. His regime had killed more than 300,000 Ugandans and expelled tens of thousands of Asians who had made Uganda their home for years. Amin died in exile in Saudi Arabia on 16 August 2003."



The Batman	Jun 15 2009, 05:17 AM Post #2
Charter Member Posts: 5,570 Group: Members Member #17 Joined: September 4, 2005	An excellent movie, ML, well acted.


« Previous Topic · Serious Stuff · Next Topic »