The Last King of Scotland: Critic Reviews

I can't think of a better actor to toggle between media-savvy jester and stone-cold killer than Forest Whitaker, who, even dressed in a kilt, conveys serious menace along with mania.

Kevin Macdonald's queasily enjoyable fiction film creates a portrait of the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin from inside the palace walls.

This is a thoroughly enjoyable, confident, dramatically satisfying movie from Macdonald, and incidentally another triumph for Peter Morgan, for whom the period now seems to offer any amount of rich material.

Whitaker is formidably compelling as a man whose quixotic temperament and larger-than-life persona both fascinate and repel.

The movie uses a fictional device to get up close and personal, but I'm not sure the fictional device works.

An adequate thriller redeemed by Forest Whitaker's sensational turn as Idi Amin.

Whitaker's performance is absolutely spellbinding -- and should land him his first Oscar nomination.

The film as a whole measures up to Forest Whitaker's performance. That's high praise indeed.

See the movie for Whitaker alone: He's possessed by evil and possesses it wholly, rendering the film (and everyone in it) his plaything.

A shrewd commentary on misguided Western excursions into the 'dark continent.'

By the end of this remarkable, uneven film, we believe that through Whitaker we have come to understand the very nature of power and corruption.

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.

Whitaker has done some surpassingly gentle and rueful work in the past, but for this role he has transformed himself -- he's either sprawled in a stupor or alarmingly mobile, throwing his big body around the room as if it weighed nothing.

This is director Kevin MacDonald's first feature film, yet along with cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle, he has produced a motion picture that will become an instant political classic.

Whitaker doesn't so much play the Ugandan president and charismatic monster, deposed in 1979 and responsible for an estimated 300,000 deaths, as he lights a slow fuse on a highly complex bomb.

Forest Whitaker gives a titanic performance as the general ... and as he seduces the naive young man into his murderous regime, director Kevin Macdonald unpacks the ignorance and arrogance that still characterize the West's attitude toward Africa.

Great as Whitaker is in this juicy slab of Oscar bait, Macdonald's movie doesn't have much to offer beyond a pair of stunning performances, propulsive editing, fantastic scenery and the heartbeat rhythms of African music.

A spellbinding safari into the mind of His Excellency the madman.

Rare is the actor who can accomplish an instant transformation from beast to buddy, but Whitaker makes it look easy.

Mr. Whitaker and Mr. McAvoy head a first-rate cast that helps The Last King of Scotland to illuminate one of the many dark chapters in recent African history.

A thunderous performance by Forest Whitaker as Ugandan dictator Idi Amin informs and ignites The Last King of Scotland so far beyond its limitations as both a biopic and a political thriller that he becomes the movie itself.

Starts well, but trips over preposterous plot developments as it pushes toward its climax.

The Last King of Scotland is a parable shocking in its truth, jolting in its lack of sentimentality, Shakespearean in its vision of the doctor's catastrophic flaw.

If this genius turn by Whitaker (he starred in Bird and The Crying Game) doesn't earn an Oscar nomination, then those little statues will lose what little meaning they have.

As Amin, the actor holds every scene he's in with a kind of explosive gravity.