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The Last King of Scotland is a 2006 British drama film based on Giles Foden's novel of the same name. It was adapted by screenwriters Peter Morgan and Jeremy Brock and directed by Kevin Macdonald. The film was a co-production between companies from the United Kingdom and the United States, including Fox Searchlight Pictures and Film4.

The Last King of Scotland tells the fictional story of Dr. Nicholas Garrigan (James McAvoy), a young Scottish doctor who travels to Uganda and becomes the personal physician to the dictator Idi Amin (Forest Whitaker). The film is based on factual events of Amin's rule.

The title comes from a reporter in a press conference who wishes to verify whether Idi Amin declared himself the King of Scotland.



The film opens in Scotland in 1970 as Nicholas Garrigan (James McAvoy) graduates from medical school. Faced with the dull prospect of joining his bourgeois father in the family's village practice, he decides to seek adventure by accepting a position in a Ugandan missionary clinic run by Dr. David Merrit (Adam Kotz) and his wife Sarah (Gillian Anderson).

Garrigan arrives in Uganda as General Idi Amin (Forest Whitaker) concludes a successful coup d’état to overthrow incumbent president Milton Obote. The two men meet at the scene of a minor car accident, where Garrigan treats the new president's injured hand. Impressed by Amin's charisma and by his vision of an egalitarian golden age for Uganda, Garrigan hesitatingly accepts the president's invitation to become his personal physician and to take charge of modernising the country's health care system. Interestingly, Amin guesses that Nicholas is reluctant to leave the missionary clinic because he has become attracted to Sarah, a married woman, thus revealing a character flaw that will later become important.

Garrigan soon becomes the president's trusted confidant and adviser. Although he is aware of the shootings and executions going on around Kampala, Garrigan accepts Amin's explanation that cracking down on Obote's insurgent supporters will bring about lasting peace. However, the viewer sees that Garrigan has merely become an apologist for a repressive regime, and that his privileged lifestyle (which involves living in a spacious modern apartment, driving a brand new Mercedes-Benz car, and attending lavish pool parties at the presidential mansion) is being funded through the economic exploitation of the Ugandan people.

While serving as Amin's family physician, Garrigan discovers that the polygamous leader has ostracized the youngest of his three wives, Kay (Kerry Washington) because she has given birth to an epileptic son, Mackenzie. In the course of treating Mackenzie's condition, Garrigan comes to admire Kay's beauty, independence and strength of spirit. The two become lovers.

Garrigan loses faith in Amin as he witnesses the president's increasing paranoia, brutality and xenophobia. When the dictator decides to expel Uganda's Asian minorities, and the British Foreign Office shows him photographic evidence that Amin's brutal regime is perpetrating mass genocide against the Ugandan people, Garrigan decides that he has seen enough. He decides to return to Scotland. But when Amin learns of his intentions, he confiscates Garrigan's British passport and replaces it with a Ugandan one. When Garrigan appeals for help to the Foreign Office, its officials tell him that he has been so complicit with the regime's atrocities that they will allow him to leave Uganda on one condition: Garrigan must use his role as Amin's personal physician to assassinate the dictator.

Garrigan's situation is further complicated when Kay informs him that she has become pregnant with his child. If her pregnancy becomes known to Amin, she will be murdered for her infidelity, so she begs Garrigan to carry out an abortion. However, Garrigan, delayed by Amin's command that he attend a press conference for Western journalists, fails to meet Kay at the appointed time. Concluding that she has been abandoned to her fate, Kay seeks out a primitive abortion in a nearby village, where she is apprehended by Amin's forces. When Garrigan searches for her, he finds only her savagely mutilated cadaver. As he falls retching to his knees, Garrigan finally confronts the palpable inhumanity of Amin's regime. He decides that he must atone for his complicity, and avenge Kay's death, by assassinating the dictator.

After a hijacked Air France aircraft lands at Entebbe International Airport seeking asylum for the Palestinian hijackers on board, Amin and other state officials rush to the scene, taking Garrigan along. Here, one of Amin's bodyguards discovers Garrigan's plot to poison Amin under the ruse of giving him pills for a headache. His treachery revealed, Garrigan is brutally beaten by Amin's henchmen. The president also discloses that he has been aware of the doctor's sexual relationship with his youngest wife, and tells Garrigan that his village traditionally punishes infidelity by hanging the culprit from a tree by his skin until he is dead. He declares that Garrigan's own death will be the only true thing that the young doctor will have accomplished in a life guided by falsehood, deceit and irresponsibility. Amin's henchmen pierce Garrigan's chest with meat hooks and string him up while Amin looks on.

When the hijackers agree to release all hostages except those of Israeli origin, the men temporarily leave Garrigan broken and bleeding on the floor so that they can oversee the release. Garrigan's medical colleague Dr. Junju (David Oyelowo) takes advantage of the distraction to come to his rescue. In exchange for Garrigan's promise to tell the world the truth about Amin's regime, Junju dresses Garrigan and wipes the blood from his face so that he can sneak aboard the plane that will carry the freed hostages out of Uganda. At the film's conclusion, the plane soars into the skies with Garrigan on board, leaving a furious Amin behind. For his act of compassion in helping Garrigan escape, Junju is executed on the spot by Amin's minions. The film closes with archival footage of the real Amin and the following text: