Fine drama, highlighted by masterful Cheadle performance

Rating: Null/10 (18 March 2005)

Obvious comparisons to SCHINDLER'S LIST can be made, and this is not the grim masterpiece that film was. This one plays it safe and conventional a bit too often, hitting discordant notes of forced Hollywood catharsis and grand moments and the like. I disliked Joaquin Phoenix's pro forma guilty white liberal, and I think Nolte was simply miscast as the impotent UN general.
All that said, the movie succeeds far more often than it fails. For every wrong note there's a bunch of absolutely right ones, and some of the dramatic crescendos are riveting (the bodies on the road and Cheadle's subsequent breakdown, for instance). Those who would criticize the movie for it's conventional structure ignore the power such conventions have: an event like the Rwandan genocide is beyond any one viewer's ken to grapple with -- it is these very conventions which enable the viewer to engage with the subject matter.
Cheadle is superb as the hotel manager who becomes a reluctant savior. Throughout he's a man consumed with the value of appearances; what's fascinating is we see him plausibly shift from believing in a phantasm-like symbol behind those appearances to using his skill with appearances to accomplish other, better goals. Unlike SCHINDLER's Liam Neeson, Cheadle is a real, plausible human being. I think this is the best thing he's ever done in the movies. As his wife, Sophie Okanedo does a fine job with a rather underwritten role: it's to her credit that she makes such an essentially passive character believable and memorable.
Has it's faults, but mostly very fine, and shamefully does not seem to have garnered the audience in America it deserved.