I'm really looking forward to see The Last King of Scotland. It has recieved some good reviews and it's about the brutal dictator Idi Amin.

Idi Amin was a sergeant in the British Colonial army. After Uganda's independece, Amin rose in the Ugandan armed forces to the position of Commander-in-Chief. In 1971, Amin seized control of the government. Amin was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Ugandans. In 1979, Tanzanian troops invaded Uganda and forced Amin into exile. Amin led out the rest of his life in Saudi Arabi were he died from natural causes in 2003.

The film starts off in 1975 a couple of years after Amin had taken power and it tells the story from the point of view of a fictional Scottish doctor, Nicholas Garrigan, played by Jame McAvoy. Even though this character is fictional, in reality, Amin did have a Scottish doctor. I think it would have been very interesting to have had a movie based on his experiences other then make it a fictional character but maybe the filmmakers had a reason to make it that way. The film is based on a book with the same title.

Even though I'm looking forward to seeing it, I'm a little bit nervous when it comes to watching films written and directed by westerners about Africa and African leaders because they tend to caricatures Africans and the continent, but since this is based on the point of view of a westerner then I could understand while watching the film. That is as far as I can say as I still have to watch it but having seen the previews I am concerned about the black makeup on Whitaker as he is already dark himself. It makes him look like those characters in the black and white movies where white men played black people (not a very good look as the characters used to be dumb, child-like people). It would be interesting to see how one blends that cartoonish image to the brutal actions of the real Idi Amin.