YMMV / The Last King of Scotland

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• Alternative Character Interpretation: Near the end, when Amin prepares to torture Nicholas to death after the latter's attempt to have Amin assassinated, he tells Nicholas that he knows about his affair with Kay. It's left ambiguous as to whether he always knew and didn't decide to kill Nicholas until his attempt on Amin's life, implying an attempt to overlook it to keep having Nicholas around, or whether he just suspected it and only fully realized it when Nicholas tried to kill him.
• Award Snub: A lot of people felt that James McAvoy should've been nominated for his strong supporting performance. Of course, this overlooks that Nicholas is arguably the lead role despite Billing Displacement, Nicholas being the protagonist and in nearly every scene, and Amin the villain who is in the film much less. It did help that Forest Whitaker acknowledged him in basically every single acceptance speech he made (which was a lot).
• Funny Moments: This scene edited for the trailer wouldn't be out of place in a YouTube Poop.
  Idi Amin: You are British?
  (soldiers point guns at Nicholas)
  Nicholas: No, I'm Scottish!
  Idi Amin: (laughs) Scottish? Why didn't you say so?
• He Really Can Act: Forest Whitaker delivers a truly astonishing and absolutely terrifying performance as Idi Amin, which earned him widespread critical acclaim and got him the Oscar for "Best Leading Actor".
• Homegrown Hero: It's a movie based on the reign of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin — as told by a Scottish doctor.
• Jerkass Woobie: Nicholas. He's perpetually selfish and conceited. He doesn't seem to care much for either of the married women he's interested in, beyond fulfilling his lust. However, finding out that one of your best friends is a mass-murdering dictator isn't decent karma. Also, watching him get tortured is brutal.
• Moral Event Horizon: Kay's murder. You can almost see any illusions that Nicholas might have still had about Amin being completely shattered, and this is what finally pushes him into doing Stone's dubious bidding.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The fate of Kay. Not to mention Nicholas being tortured, more specifically being hung from meathooks by his nipples.
  • Amin's gradual Villainous Breakdown becomes increasingly frightening.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • James McAvoy is best known for portraying the younger Professor Charles Xavier in the X-Men Film Series.
  • David Oyelowo, who plays Garrigan's medical colleague, would go on to play Martin Luther King (the real life inspiration for Professor X) in Selma, making their pairing in this movie a little eerie.
• Tearjerker: As Nicholas escapes Uganda, he flashes back to when he arrived and how beautiful he found it. It's heartbreaking that despite all his arrogance and naivete, he genuinely wanted to do good in coming there and is devastated at how everything went to hell.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Idi Amin is of course the main selling point of the movie, and he pervades everything that happens in Uganda, but he's not actually in the movie all that much. It's not unheard of for audience members to get a little impatient with the Garrigan scenes (good though McAvoy is). In fact, the main reason why several critics disliked the film was because they felt that it should have focused primarily, if not solely, on Forest Whitaker's fantastic portrayal of Amin.
  Michelle Orange: Whitaker's riveting performance as the unraveling Amin is where this film wants to be; instead we're stuck with Garrigan's Jesus Christ pose, and the expected out that amounts to little more than, "Forget it, Nick. It's Africa."
  • One could also argue though that seeing Amin intermittently and through Nicholas' eyes made him much more terrifying. It's the same effect as Darth Vader in the original Star Wars and Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs. When both would go on to become the focus character in sequels and prequels the impact was greatly diminished. In LKOS we have a terrifying character resulting in one of the least disputed best actor winners of all time.

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