A good movie, yet ....

Rating: 7/10 (25 March 2005)

To keep it short: What really turned me down was that the makers of this movie or maybe rather the writer of the script didn't have the courage to focus on the events of the genocide in rwanda as such. Why couldn't they just try and show the mere barbarism of what really happened. Like the catholic church of rwanda got involved in massacres, like last days neighbors became murders over night - and the dimensions of the genocide itself which were unseen of since the shoa. 800'000 to 1 million people slaughtered within 3 months, for the greater part with machetes and other tools - very little of this does shine through the almost romantic story of a brave and pure man. Sometimes I think that such stories rather use events like the rwanda genocide for a historical background only: The main story seems to be this of heroism where in fact a mass killing among neighbours was going on in rwanda. what fits this picture is the way the rebels of the rlf are glorified in the end of the film. in fact, after they had kicked out parts of the hutu murder gangs, they started intense killing based on racist projections too. it is still unknown among historians how many the killed then, but figures may go up very, very high. But as I said - maybe the actual events aren't that important for hero-movies like this. What I liked about the film was the role of the u.n. and the post-colonialist governments as portrayed in "hotel rwanda": in fact the international community witnessed over months the mass murder.