The Last King of Scotland

Idi Amin was a monster, evil incarnate, the Ugandan ruler responsible for the deaths of 300,000 of his own people during his horrific reign in the 1970s.
Amin is also human. That humanity oozes out of the powerful performance of Golden Globe winner Forest Whitaker in The Last King of Scotland.
The movie, based on the novel of the same name, centers on the odd relationship between Amin and Dr. Nicholas Garrigan, a Scot who arrives in Uganda looking for adventure.
He gets more than what he bargains for when Amin, after a chance encounter, hires Garrigan as his personal doctor.
As played by Whitaker, Amin swings from childlike charm to paranoid delusion. He is a man who sees enemies all around and embraces Garrigan as one of the few he can trust.
Garrigan finds himself lulled into the heady early days of Amin's regime, and we experience with him what it must have felt like to see the optimism and joy found in an independent African nation.
But slowly, the veil falls away, and Garrigan begins to see the cracks in Amin's empire and the bloody mess of Amin's madness.
Whitaker grabs hold of all the complexities that made up Amin's psyche. He scares and fascinates at the same time.
James McAvoy's portrayal of Garrigan is good, showing a naive, reckless young man blinded by the pleasures of being close to such power.
But this is Whitaker's movie, a terrifying tour-de-force full of heart. Never has evil looked so good.