The Tragedy the World Refuses to Remember

Rating: 8/10 (7 October 2017)

While America was transfixed by O.J. Simpson and his low-speed chase in a white Ford Bronco, the worst humanitarian tragedy since WWII was taking place in Rwanda.
Don Cheadle excels as the Hutu manager of a Belgian luxury hotel who does whatever is necessary to save as many people as possible while a Hutu militia, largely incited by government radio, engage in an unrelenting slaughter of Rwanda's Tutsi minority.
Cheadle and the people he is trying to protect hold out in the hotel protected only by a small contingent of UN troops led by Nick Nolte, whose number one order is to avoid a firefight with the locals. Cheadle effectively balances diplomacy and bribery to keep the Hutu warlords out of the hotel and to buy precious time for him and his people to ride out the massacre. The film accurately portrays the total failure of the "world community" to take action that could have prevented the massacre of hundreds of thousands.
The UN and other organizations have detailed files and reports of this occurrence that can be read on line by anyone who is interested in this. In those files you will learn there was a similar incident there in 1970 that claimed 100,000 lives. They're real good at writing up reports after the fact, but they were useless in preventing or limiting this tragedy. That's essentially what this movie tells us as well.