"Schindler's List" meets "The Killing Fields" by way of "Casablanca" ; Cheadle's triumphant career best

Rating: Null/10 (27 December 2004)

HOTEL RWANDA (2004) **** Don Cheadle, Sophie Okonedo, Nick Nolte, Joaquin Phoenix. (Dir: Terry George)
"Schindler's List" meets "The Killing Fields" by way of "Casablanca" ; Cheadle's triumphant career best
What would you do if suddenly you found yourself in the oncoming path of a genocide? That is the question that South African Paul Rusesabagina faced ten years ago when the Hutu militia hunted down its Tutsi citizens determined to wipe out these 'cockroaches'.
Rusesabagina (played beautifully by Cheadle who deserves an Oscar nomination) is a mild-mannered yet savvy businessman who works as a hotel manager in Rwanda in 1994 who has put on blinders to the unrest in his nation that suddenly sets its all-too-true reality in his neighborhood one night when he witnesses one of his neighbors being dragged bodily from his home by a jeep of Army soldiers and then beaten when he resists. Life as he knows it is now over as this is the tip of iceberg to what events lay in wait.
Determined to save his small neighborhood and his family l Rusesabagina maneuvers one of the hotel's van shuttles crammed with his friends and family to the Hotel Demille where he works as a refugee site. Shortly thereafter the hotel is inundated with scores of fleeing Tutsis seeking solace and Paul must then decide what can be done to keep the bloodshed at bay.
On hand is the UN soldiers led by Canadian Col. Oliver (a world-weary Nolte doing some fine supporting work) who informs Paul that things are only getting worse for the most part and as predicted the black South Africans will not be rescued leaving the ingenuity and quick thinking of Paul to keep things on track until they manage a form of escape.
Director Terry George racks up the suspense and dread without resorting to any truly graphic images of the war at hand and the uprisings depict the machete brandishing hordes at a safe distance yet there is no doubt of just how horrific the proceedings at hand are in some truly unnerving moments including Paul's decision to get supplies in the dead of night when he encounters what he fears the most  that things in fact are only worse than he could have ever imagined.
Cheadle, one of our finest and most versatile actors working today, gives his portrayal of a decent, ordinary and extraordinary man that many of us would only aspire to be in the face of death and the threat of violence so thick in the air it would more than likely only cause paralysis to contemplate a next move in a morbid game of chess  a dignity that encompasses the entire film and spread to his co-stars, namely the stoic Okonedo as Paul's wife Tatiana who also provides some soul and tenderness yet a stern anger fueled turn.
Inevitably there are comparisons to "Schindler's List", "The Killing Fields" and even "Casablanca" yet the film stands alone in its defiance to what mob mentality is about and how prejudice is much deeper than what is on the surface. This is one of the most inspiring, harrowing journeys into fear and is one of the year's very best.