They left behind almost a million corpses...

Rating: Null/10 (4 October 2010)

Terry George tells the harrowing story of one man who single-handedly saved more than a thousand lives during the beyond tragic 1994 genocide in Rwanda. The story of this admirable man Paul Rusesabagina is inspiring and a great reminder that one man can make a difference, even amongst a mass massacre that has been ignored by the rest of the world, including superpowers like Europe and America. George stays focused on Rusesabagina's story as the violence has been toned down. One can only imagine how much bloodier, visceral and brutal it really was. More than a million people were slaughtered while the rest of the world just went about with their daily lives. Pearson and George's screenplay is solid and the execution is quite raw. The art direction is brilliant as the sets and costumes looks authentic. The background score is effective without being melodramatic. Don Cheadle and Sophie Okonedo deliver transcendent performances. Okonoedo captures the sheer rawness of the emotions of a wife and mother in constant fear for her family's life and Cheadle is skillfully restrained as the man who's trying his level best to rescue as many people as he could without resorting to violence. Nick Nolte and Joaquin Phoenix lend excellent support and the rest of a cast do a commendable job too.
'Hotel Rwanda' is an important film. It serves as a reminder how the world let millions of people get butchered and how one common man took matters into his own hand to save as many as he could.