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The Last King of Scotland |
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 Release Date: 09/27/06 (Future Release)
Starring: Forest Whitaker, James McAvoy, Gillian Anderson, David Oyelowo, Kerry Washington
Director: Kevin Macdonald
Rating: (R) |
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NEW YORK REVIEW
The Queen’s Peter Morgan also wrote the screenplay (with Jeremy Brock) of The Last King of Scotland, the fictional story of a young Scottish doctor (James McAvoy) who travels to Uganda to escape an overbearing patriarch and ends up in the hearty embrace of a patriarch who’s even more overbearing … Idi Amin! The movie is one of those morality plays about the dangers of letting yourself be seduced by powerful people, especially when they’re genocidal maniacs, and you can guess where it’s heading when the doctor and Idi’s wife No. 3 (Kerry Washington) begin trading longing looks. But if the story is familiar, the treatment isn’t: The film is phenomenally well directed by Kevin Macdonald and edited by Justine Wright to bring out every bit of scary volatility in the most casual interactions. The charismatic McAvoy finds an ever-shifting blend of opportunism and decency; Simon McBurney is a reptilian marvel as Idi’s English minder; and Gillian Anderson is amazingly vivid as a beaten-down do-gooder. Dwarfing all is Forest Whitaker, who finally gets to seize the space and show us how he can rage. His Amin is the most bloodcurdling kind of actor: a paranoiac with one eye on his audience and the power to give them the hook.
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