There wasn't enough room in the subject line for me to say this is a British, Italian and South African co-production.
Hotel Rwanda was released with close to unanimous critical acclaim, and many selected it as the best film of 2004. While it does have some impressive elements, I admired it more for its content then its form. One cineaste I know called it Schindlers List in Africa, but it lacks the ideas of that film (restrain yourself, Edwin, you havent seen it). In a way, it is a well made two-hour public service announcement for Amnesty International, a great organization, yes, but better films have been made about mans depravity to other men.
The premise of the two films, both of which are based on true events, is the same: a man caught up in a war risks everything to try to save the lives of complete strangers at risk of genocide, while he himself is of the majority group and would be safe if he left quietly alone. The man here is Paul Rusesabagina (Don Cheadle), a manger at the Milles Collines hotel in Kigali, Rwanda in 1994. Things look very good for the country at the start of the film: after years of civil war, a peace deal has brokered between the majority Hutus and minority Tutsis. Chaos breaks out when the Hutu president is assassinated by Tutsi forces, apparently the peace deal was ruse. The Hutu army comes up with a simple solution- kill every Tutsi in the country, so that there will be no next generation to fight. Paul is Hutu, but his wife, children and many of his friends are Tutsi, so he hides them in the hotel after it has been evacuated. The news goes from bad to worse when the local UN commander (Nick Nolte) informs him that the Americans and Europeans will not interfere to stop the genocide. Pauls death and the murder of everyone in the hotel seems sure.
By far the strongest element in the movie is the powerhouse performance by Cheadle, who was nominated for on Oscar and deserved to win, over Jamie Foxx. We see the complete meltdown of an ordinary guy who has to live through a nightmare and try to keep his composure so he can think, for one small error will mean the death of his entire family and over a thousand people at the hotel. Where the movie goes wrong is that is preachy. The Canadian U.N. General (Nick Nolte) gives a long sermon about how the Americans and Europeans dont care what happens to Africans. This is sadly true, but I dont like being lectured by a movie. There some groan moments of obvious screenwriting (such as the last line). Beyond that, I felt oddly detached emotionally from the atrocities, perhaps the problem is that Terry George uses cinematic techniques such as music to tell us that genocide is bad, when we know it is already.
The comparison between Schindlers List is inevitable. Although I feel Spielbergs film is overrated (too long and too confusing, especially towards the beginning), the last ten or fifteen minuets of that film were among the best scenes I have ever seen in a movie, with something deep to say about goodness and guilt. This movie essentially says that genocide is bad. Well, it is, but this movie cheats and doesnt show us how bad it really is, nor does it say much beyond that statement.
Nevertheless, this movie is worth seeing just for Cheadles brilliant performance, and because teach some things about a political conflict that few Westerners know about. But because of the importance of the tragedy, this should have been a great film, or maybe a documentary.
Hotel Rwanda (2004)