Too grave a topic to deal with in such a manner

Rating: 5/10 (7 February 2005)

This is a 'negative review', and I'm having a hard time explaining why I'm dissatisfied with this movie. I'll do my best. First off, it is a noble effort  the fact that this movie covers this topic of the Rwandan genocide, attempting to bring it a wide audience, is something to be commended. In the contemporary clutter of brainless, feel-good movies, anything that tries to be somewhat responsible and serious is to be commended for effort alone. But dealing with a topic of this magnitude is a double edged sword: the movie has a responsibility to making the viewer feel 1 million dead.
Unfortunately, it doesn't manage to escape the formulaic Hollywood feel-good story of the hero who wins out in the end. This typical treatment may be fine for other topics, but Rwanda was a real genocide, and this tragedy should not be treated as the playground of 'based on a true story' movies.
When there are 1 million people being butchered, I don't want to see the main character hugging his wife, telling the audience how much his family means to him. I don't want to see the obviously sanitized gruesomeness that won't revolt the typical movie-goer. And please, I don't want to see the many, many cheap and improbable just-in-time rescues. Not here. That's too easy.
I can see that in every other popcorn flick concerning concocted disasters befalling some typical hero. (This type of treatment has been cheapened by its predecessors, and it no longer genuinely reaches the audience - or at least this member of the audience.) Something truly original was needed here, a delicate mix between the irrationality and inhumanity of the conflict. Instead, it let just a little bit of Hollywood formula creep in, and for Rwanda, that is unacceptable. Despite its excellent attempt, the movie fails.
Perhaps not surprisingly. This movie sets a huge expectation for itself by dealing with such a gruesome, REAL event. How do you condense into 2 hours something that no one can even begin to grasp, understand, explain? But the difficulty of its task still doesn't rescue this movie, because effort marks can only go so far. Even the slightest bit of over dramatization and the show cheapens  the lovely tale of the hotel manager falls apart, and the figure of 1 million dead reappears. It turns Hotel Rwanda from an attempt to make one understand and appreciate this bit of history into a gimmicky, easy-to-swallow portrayal of the genocide of 1 million people. Hotel Rwanda isn't gimmicky, nor easy-to-swallow, by any USUAL set of standards, but just dealing with the Rwandan genocide raises the standard to an impossible level. Not surprisingly, the movie can't reach those impossible standards; I don't know that anything this side of an excellent documentary can.