Top Notch

Rating: 10/10 (24 July 2006)

Grade: A
Terry George's sober-sided and ham-fisted Hotel Rwanda is a caustic indictment of Western indifference to atrocities committed in the world's rawer precincts. It reminds us that we have short memories and shorter attention spans and most newspapers these days cede coverage of foreign events to the various cable news networks. We pay little attention to the internecine tribulations of savage foreigners so long as only brown or yellow people are involved.
And so, a decade after the slaughter of nearly a million Rwandan Tutsi by their Hutu countrymen, many Americans may be surprised to learn that such atrocities took place -- that the powder blue helmets of United Nations peacekeepers could virtually stand aside for genocide. Even the division of the Rwandans into Hutus and Tutsi can be laid at the feet of the West -- it was Belgian colonists who decided the slender, lighter-skinned Tutsis were superior to their Hutu brothers and required that all citizens carry identity cards that identified them by their ethnicity. For decades, the Belgians encouraged the belief that the Tutsi minority was superior to the Hutus. Tutsi were favored with better educational opportunities and jobs than the Hutu, with predictable results: In 1959, 20,000 Tutsis were killed in a series of riots. When Belgium relinquished control of Rwanda in 1962, the Hutu majority adopted the Tutsi as an all-purpose scapegoat. Some Tutsis fled to Uganda and -- along with some moderate Hutus -- formed an opposition group called the Rwandan Patriotic Front.
In the midst of this maelstrom, Paul Rusesabagina, a Hutu hotel manager with European manners and training, was able to save more than 1,200 endangered Rwandans by passing them off as "guests" at the Belgian-owned Milles Collines resort in Kigali. Rusesabagina has so often been compared to Oskar Schindler, the Czech industrialist who saved the lives of thousands of Polish Jews during World War II, that the comparison feels easy and reflexive, but the truth is Rusesabagina performed a miracle in Kigali. As played by the ever-efficient Don Cheadle, Rusesabagina is the ultimate concierge. He knows his clients and uses a brutal general's taste for single-malt Scotch and Cohiba cigars to buy time and protection for his charges. A walking argument for decency, we see sublimated anger flashing in his civilized eyes as he deals with all sides to maintain his makeshift sanctuary. A product of European grooming, Rusesabagina can't quite believe that he -- and his people -- have been abandoned by those he'd considered his friends. Cheadle admits a trace of hubris to his character; Rusesabagina's horror at being abandoned mingles with disgruntlement at being not quite a full-fledged member of the corporate family.
Director George isn't as subtle as Cheadle. He's an old Irish Republican who tends to see the world in strident shades, but he has got hold of a subject worthy of his righteous anger. And he has cast it with fine actors -- Nick Nolte quakes with self-disgust as a Canadian colonel ashamed of the orders he has to follow. Sophie Okonedo is brilliant as Rusesabagina's Tutsi wife, Tatiana.