The Last King of Scotland

When Mary had told me that The Last King of Scotland was disturbing, I had taken it to mean that there was little violence on display, that it was hinted at rather than actually shown. I was wrong!

Lisa and I went to see it on Monday. It was still showing at Dundrum, which was handy for me. It was an excellent movie, but there was a few scenes that were quite violent. While it's true that the violence is implied rather than shown through most of the movie, this changes quite dramatically at the end. There are a few gruesome shots, and I had to look away a few times (I'm not good with blood and gore). I think what was hard to take was that the violence we were shown wasn't random. The few people we actually see dead, tortured or being killed are key characters in the story, and I found that their pain and death was harder for me to take because I liked them.

And Forest Whitaker is fantastic, well deserving of his Oscar for Best Actor. I knew I had seen him in a good movie before, but I couldn't remember which. Lisa reminded me that he had been in The Crying Game. It's hard to believe that that movie came out in 1992. I must watch it again. It was such a great movie.