Well Worth Seeing

Rating: Null/10 (16 January 2005)

For most of the last six weeks it's been impossible to pick up a newspaper or watch a news show without a story about people everywhere pitching in to help survivors of last month's tsunami in Asia that killed at least 150,000. Hotel Rwanda, a grim movie about genocide in Central Africa, shows how equally indifferent the world can be to human suffering on an even greater scale.
In 1994, the Rwandan government, controlled by the Hutu ethnic group, which accounts for a majority of the country's population, launched a vicious campaign to wipe out the Tutsi minority. Before the year was out, more than one million Rwandans were dead.
What was happening in Rwanda was no secret. News outlets were full of graphic and grisly pictures of Hutus murdering Tutsis, often with machetes, and fields and roads full of corpses. This time, however, the world did nothing. President Bill Clinton says it is the biggest regret of his political life.
Hotel Rwanda is about one man who did act, and by doing so, saved more than 1,000 lives. Don Cheadle plays Paul Rusesabagina, the manager of a luxury hotel. Paul has made a career of knowing how to understand and meet the needs of his customers and staff. He uses these skills to keep alive his family, neighbors, coworkers and others who come to him for help.
Cheadle gives a wonderful performance, Sophie Okenodo as his wife is equally good, while director Terry George does a terrific job at showing the horrors of what happened in Rwanda. This is a movie well worth seeing.