Hotel Rwanda will hit you harder than the majority of the movies you've seen

Rating: 9/10 (18 December 2005)

Hotel Rwanda was a touching, shocking, and very powerful film. I was surprised filmmakers waited a whole 10 years to make a movie about one of the biggest massacres of all time.
Hotel Rwanda tells the story of Paul Rusesabagina (Don Cheadle, in a career best performance), a hotel manager who is forced to turn his hotel into a refugee camp to save his family and the refugees from the massacre that took place in Rwanda in 1994.
The first question that will come across your mind while watching HR is "why have we become so cruel?", and no wonder one character asked the exact same question during the movie. You'll see roads covered with corpses, the males of the dominant tribe, The Hutus, raping females of the other tribe, The Tutsis, and Hutus slaughtering Tutsis on the streets. And then the United Nations, in one of their biggest failures of all time, decided to rescue only the Westerners (by making them leave the country) and leave the people of Rwanda to die alone. And Hotel Rwanda isn't afraid to show everything. I wonder how they could get away with a PG-13 rating.
After that, I think you'll feel ashamed. In the best scene of the movie, an American cameraman (Joaquin Phoenix, in a great cameo), had to leave the country after the infamous UN decision. When his Ruandan friend begs him to take her with him, he says with teary eyes "I've never felt so ashamed". And frankly, I was ashamed too. I didn't try to donate money, or protest, or do anything for that country, and that's why I felt I (along with millions of people around the world) was responsible for what happened. I even think your average Joe will never know this massacre happened in the first place. And that's another great thing about Hotel Rwanda: It reminded us of that horrible event.
And I have to disagree with the people that said the somewhat uplifting ending ruined the movie for them. In fact, I can't find a better ending for the movie. That ending happened in real life, and it shows that despite all the cruelness in the world, there's still some hope left.
So, I'd definitely recommend Hotel Rwanda. Being a true story, it will hit you harder and touch you more than the majority of the movies you've seen.