by Christian De Matteo

HUGE

When the journey to see this film finally ended, as locating it was hugely difficult (NOTE TO MOVIE COMPANIES:  If you want your indies noticed as well as your mainstream, don’t just send us passes to mainstreams… we like indies at HUGEReviews.com), I found the film more than well worth the wait.

I honestly can not remember the last time I was so enthralled by a film, nor can I remember the last time I was actually made to literally sit at the edge of my seat for the last 45 minutes of a film.

The Last King of Scotland is intense.  Not at first though.  At first it is the fun story of a pot-smoking medical student, sick of living under his doctor father’s shadow in Scotland and really desiring a more intimate knowledge of more women’s anatomies.  He decides at total random to go to Uganda and proceeds, almost immediately, to get laid and have fun.  Awesome, could be a smart American Pie movie… until he meets and is ensconced by Forest Whitaker’s Idi Amin Dada (“three i’s, two d’s, one gun” – Richard Pryor).

And than he goes mad.  Completely and totally… well, there’s no other word for it, apesh*t.  When Forest Whitaker plays out of control, the man is terrifying, and so believable the movie is a complete and total reality.

The Last King of Scotland is a story with few good guys and yet still makes you fret for the main characters.  The Last King is the most intense movie I’ve seen in the theater in years, managing to ball up into one the hysteria of a real horror movie, the intensity of the deepest of dramas and unflinching humanity of characters by Cormac McCarthy.  Everyone is real, every temptation is real, every mistake is real, and every consequence is as completely unimaginable as any real consequence is.

Director Kevin MacDonald is primarily a documentary director but his stab at historical fiction is astounding.  I suppose box office money was the reason this wasn’t considered for Best Picture and Best Direction, but it truly is worthy of those categories.  I was so completely overwhelmed by this film, I left the theater out of breath.

If you see only one nominated Best Actor performance this year, make this it.  The movie is intense to the point of discomfort at times but so exciting that, unlike Babel, an excellent movie in its own right, you leave the theater not depressed but elated from all the adrenaline running through your veins.