Powerful stuff

Rating: 9/10 (16 February 2005)

Terry George's Hotel Rwanda is a deeply compelling film about the Rwandan civil war that resulted in an enormous genocide (over a million dead). It is the true-life story of Paul Rusesabagina (Don Cheadle), a Hutu hotel manager who sheltered over a thousand Tutsi refugees from the other warring Hutus. People have complained Hotel Rwanda isn't brutal enough and too selective in its view of a much larger genocide. Although I concede that it may have benefited from its original R rating, the latter seemed intended. Hotel Rwanda does show the genocide as a whole but its also a personal story.
Paul has a few helpful people to look to: a Red Cross worker (Cara Seymour), a sympathetic hotel owner (Jean Reno), and two cameramen recording footage (it also leads to the film's most brutally honest realization that people will look at this footage, say "Oh my god, that's terrible", and keep on eating their dinners). However, these aren't alone enough to stop the machetes of the Hutu. And since he is married to a Tutsi, Tatiana (Sophie Okonedo), his family is in constant danger as well.
Hotel Rwanda works just as well as an account of man who in desperate times becomes less concerned about himself and more about helping others. The most obvious comparison would be to Oscar Schindler. Paul bribes Hutu officials with beer and money, hides Tutsi orphans, and is frustrated by the United Nation's inability to physically fight back the Hutu forces. The poignancy of the character is helped by a quiet and dignified performance by Don Cheadle, one of the best I have seen all year. Sophie Okonedo is also great if not a little more underplayed.
It may hard to swallow at times, but this is the point. Hotel Rwanda is a reminder of just how much pain human beings can inflict on one other and how much good one can bring to another.