HOP New Feature: – Movie Review: The Last King of Scotland

I did not fully engage in this movie, because from what I’ve read and the one clip I saw (during the Oscars when they were reviewing the Best Male Actor category) it seemed pretty intense and somewhat violent. And I’ve written before about how sensitive I am to such media in the years since Kyle was born. But also, I have been thinking lately that I need to get over myself and not miss out on all of these fantastic books and movies that people have been recommending. Maybe I don’t have to skip them altogether – maybe I can just take them in small doses and keep reminding myself “this is fiction, this is fiction” over and over.

Except this movie wasn’t totally fiction, and the reality behind the story is that approximately 300,000 people were killed during the reign of Idi Amin. So says the text at the end of the film.

But ha! I got to the end of the film so now you know I actually watched it. But when I say I didn’t fully engage, I mean that during most of the movie I was blogging or reading blogs, or cleaning the kitchen, or reading “Brain, Child” while eating Cookies ‘n Cream ice cream, or going to the bathroom and changing into my pajamas, or cutting coupons. I would check in on the film now and then enough to get the gist of what was going on. Of COURSE I was watching during the most grisly part (if you have seen the movie you know that I’m talking about the thing that made the guy puke) and of COURSE I keep thinking about it today, but my mantra “this is fiction” is actually working because how did the filmmakers know that that’s what actually happened? Right?

So here’s what I, in my limited viewing of the movie, think of “The Last King of Scotland:”

Forrest Whitaker is one kickass actor. I actually met him once, in a bar at a birthday party, and he was the most gentle, soft-spoken, nicely nice person in person. So that’s some damn good acting, I say. His character was CRAAZY.

I was right when I said that the movie was fraught with tension. The whole time you are watching it you feel like some bad stuff is going to go down during the very next second. When the bad stuff does go down, you think it’s going to get worse during the very next second. Yikes. It’s like a long version of The Shield, which I totally can’t watch anymore.

Also, the whole time you watch it you’re like “did this really happen? Is this really true? Did this doctor guy really exist? I didn’t even know that Idi Amin was the head of Uganda. It’s a good thing they have exposition in the film, because it could have been any African country for all I knew. I know that admitting these things makes me look like one of those stupid Americans that Jay Leno polls on the streets outside his studio to see if the average American knows the names of the first five presidents and none of them get that right, but hey, I’m just being honest here.

Overall, I’d say it was a good story, excellent acting, and kudos to the makeup people who managed to make everyone look appropriately sweaty through the whole thing. Lighthearted fare it was not.

Stay tuned for whatever we pull out of the cabinet next.