Idi Amin, the brutal and possibly mad Ugandan dictator, used to sit on a gilded chair surrounded by his often trembling sidekicks, listening to sentimental Scottish ballads sung by an African ladies choir.
He wore the full kilted regalia of the Scots regiment for whom he used to slop out. A decent sort of chap, the British, who helped him to power, used to opine, sipping Amin's whisky from a safe distance and diplomatically guarding their backs.
That is one of the weirder scenes we are vouchsafed in Kevin Macdonald's film, adapted from Giles Foden's book by Jeremy Brock and Peter Morgan, which opened the 50th London Film Festival last night.
It is a colourful and worthy start to a programme of some 180 films, a number of which may not be seen in London again. This one, however, certainly will.
The book was fictional, but based on the actuality of Amin's rule, and the film only occasionally slips into improbability. Not, however, in its central performance from Forest Whitaker as Amin, who gives him both the facile charm and the terrifying paranoia that many witnesses have spoken of before.
His is a suitably towering performance which might well achieve an Oscar nomination. You almost like the fellow until, in the latter half of the movie, the blood begins to flow.
It is thus no real surprise that Garrigan ( James McAvoy), the young Scottish doctor who goes to Africa for adventure as well as the opportunity to do some good, forsakes his clinic ( and Gillian Anderson's sexy wife of the only other medic around) to become first Amin's doctor and then his chief adviser.
He falls hook, line and sinker for a man who seems utterly sincere in his attempt to save Ugandans from Obote's corrupt regime. He is soon in well over his head, resented by those who call him Amin's white monkey, and he also unwisely falls for the youngest of Amin's wives, making her pregnant. His story can only have a disastrous end.
The film, beautifully shot in the rich colours of Africa, and directed with more than competence, can never quite explain Garrigan's foolishness even though it suggests that his tight-arsed Scots background must have created the need for risk-taking and sexual adventure. Nor are the politics of the time more than sketchily traced.
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Well as McAvoy plays, it is not always easy to believe in him. It's dead easy to believe in Amin who is thankfully never overplayed. Poor Africa, laid out before us in all its often gory glory, to be assailed by such power-hungry ogres!
The Last King Of Scotland
Cert: 15
