An incredible story of bravery within one of the most barbaric episodes in recent history

Rating: 7/10 (19 August 2014)

The Rwandan genocide of 1994 remains one of the worst atrocities in recent history. Maybe even the very worst. After all, has there been a situation since where 800,000 people were murdered in a three month period? Not only that but they were primarily killed by being hacked to death by machetes; women, children, babies – everyone. The massacres were a result of the Hutu tribe taking vengeance on their Tutsi counterparts. The problem between the tribes had its roots in colonialism, where the Belgians had installed the Tutsis in positions of power due to them looking more 'European'. This ties in with more recent events in the Middle East where Western intervention has caused many more problems than it has resolved. Unfortunately, history has a tendency of repeating itself. But the biggest disgrace of the Rwandan situation was that the world actually did not intervene when the people of the country really needed them to. They did nothing aside from save their own citizens. The United Nations came out of it looking especially bad and completely ineffective, basically withdrawing when ten of their men were killed. The fallout was an unchecked murder spree of unbelievable proportions.
The film tells the story of this horror via a true life story with a positive narrative. It focuses on a Hutu called Paul Rusesabagina who is the manager of the Les Milles Collines hotel in Kigali. He used his connections to save over a thousand people by giving them shelter in his hotel and by doing so putting himself in considerable danger. The narrative has some very obvious similarities to Schindler's List (1993). It's kind of a story that seems too unbelievable to be true but true it is though. It does sanitise the story somewhat though, in that it resists showing violence or too graphic results of the carnage. I think this pulling of its punches was a bad move though as this was such a dreadfully violent situation that the film would have been better served being more explicit to hammer home the true horror. The similar film Shooting Dogs (2005) presented the carnage more harshly and in some respects had more of an overall emotional impact as a result. What Hotel Rwanda does have though is Don Cheadle. Rusesabagina is played by this excellent actor in a performance of perfection. The on location shooting also contributes a lot to the overall impact. And even though the music was too forcefully Hollywood obvious at times, the drama overall was very effective in giving its message out clearly without being too contrived. All-in-all, an impressive film about a bit of history that shames the Western world.