Pugnate

Hotel Rwanda

Score: 3/4 stars.

Hotel Rwanda is a very good and highly recommended film that shines through a brilliant performance from Don Cheadle. Cheadle plays Paul Rusesabagina, the clever Hutu manager of a hotel that performs in the midst of a crisis driven country, suffering because of genocide. He plays a character who reminds me much of my father. Like my father, Paul is a good family man, who takes decisions that may appear cruel and unusual in the short term, but prove to be crucial in the longer term.

His wife Tatiana (Sophie Okonedo) is of the race that is being persecuted, and actress Sophie Okonedo is superb in her role.

The storyline sees the persecution of the Tutsi, and is a true story based on the heroics of a hotel manager who saved nearly 1,200 people by being an excellent administrator in a crisis. The emotional content is heavy, and the acting is pretty good, making some scenes quite heavy to watch.

However I don’t think Terry George was the right man for the job. Although he has made a pretty good picture, a couple of times there are plot pieces that seem artificially constructed, which is a total disservice to the film.

Minor Spoilers:

There is a scene in the movie where Paul is in a jeep and can’t see because of the fog. The director wants us to believe that a fog in Africa is so thick that Paul is unable to realize that he isn’t riding on rocks, but is actually on a sea of corpses. Paul has the jeep stopped and literally falls on a child’s corpse and is overcome.

Later he is in the washroom changing his shirt and is overcome with grief because of what he saw earlier. To make sure that we know what Paul is grieving about, the director cues in the same music that we heard when Paul ‘suddenly’ hit the corpses.

He begins to cry – which is honest – but when an employee tries to open the door, Paul becomes hysterical when asking the employee to keep the door closed. Through out the movie, Paul has always kept his emotions intact when dealing with staff. It is the administrator’s bones in his body, but during the scene Cheadle behaves not how Paul would, but how an actor would.

The scenario with the corpses has affected him to the point where he asks his wife to commit suicide by jumping off the roof incase the army ever comes to kill her. This is a tired plot element used in so many other pictures, and again used in this movie, for suspense and humor, rather than driving the story.

His wife, Tatiana, has discovered that her brother is dead but his two children are alive, though trapped inside the worst hit areas of the city. Tatiana mentions rescuing the children often through out the movie, but we realize that this is another plot cliché. Often in movies such as this, directors struggle to find ways to finish the picture. They often end the movie with a scene of unity in order to give a satisfactory ending. Sadly this movie isn’t any different.

I think the most creative way I have seen a factual movie end was during Spike Lee’s masterpiece, Malcolm X. The end has a special appearance by Nelson Mandela, and provides a strong ending.

I am not saying that Hotel Rwanda needed to pull a rabbit out of a hat, to make a convincing ending. Admittedly, the genre often finds endings difficult, but this one is too much of a cliché. And even though we learn through the credits, that the real manager escaped to Belgium along with his family and the two rescued children, one feels that their ruination was highly exaggerated to strike a strong emotional chord.

The subject matter of the film is already powerful enough, without the director juicing it up further. But as I said earlier, this is an actor’s film, and a picture with a strong story to tell. It is a good movie, and definitely worth the watch. Has some of the best performances this year, enough to give it an oscar buzz.

munchen

it may be 3/4 stars as a movie but as a story it is a full five. Unbelievable story and almost crushing in emotion. I think everybody should see this, if not for its movie qualities then for the story. People should watch this to get a feel for what rwanda really was. It has parallels to schindler's list in both the story sense and that its something that should by all. two thumbs up

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"Love is a perky elf dancing a merry little jig and then suddenly he turns on you with a miniature machine gun" -Matt Groening

derektor

there are few movies that make me feel bad for being human. this is one of them. i can't recall exactly how it was quoted, but the saying about how could we humans NOT do anything after seeing such horrible footage.

my family watches tv during dinner from time to time, and we're all guilty of continuing our dinner and not doing anything about the atrocities that are going on.

Kostya

I agree with Pugnate on most fronts here, though I'm surprised this film dropped off the first page so quickly, despite it's drawbacks, Hotel Rwanda is a cut above films like Black Hawk Down and given that it was released in domestic cinemas I would have thought it would have been talked about a bit more.

Essentially, aside from the forgivable lapses in realism and occasional surreptitious manipulation, my real problem with this movie was the ending. Tragedy is simply not a marketable commodity in the film world anymore and frankly I think that it's a major problem.
Hotel Rwanda comes as close as mainstream films will to a tragedy, which is your traditional 'triumph against all odds' tale where one event which bucks the trend is focused upon. Schindler's List for instance, while it is a consumate film is inferior in comparison to truly honest films about the holocaust such as Shoah. Now, while these tales touch upon the madness and the horror, they always shy away from really getting into it, and prefer to leave us with a small, but significant victory amidst it all. Frankly I believe an honest, or responsible treatment of a genocidal event should leave audiences absolutely gutted, completely and unambiguously terrified and disgusted, there shouldn't be any attempt to mitigate the madness with 'but the human spirit prevailed' or 'good people can make a difference' because this cheapens the moral significance of what occurred.
I mean, I guess stories like Hotel Rwanda are more palatable, but they are not in my opinion a true attempt to grapple with the gravity of the subject matter.

Grasshopper Green

I just saw this film. It left me sick, disgusted, and ashamed of my country and of being a human. I put off seeing it until know because I knew I'd come out feeling like this. I realize that the story has been "Hollywood-ized" to a point, but you just can't completely sugarcoat the events that take place in the movie. It was the best movie I've seen in a long time, because it is one that will make me think and feel for a long time in the future.

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"They say that patriotism is the last refuge to which a scoundrel clings; steal a little and they throw you in jail, steal a lot and they make you king"

Formerly Medusa

Kostya

Medusa, if Hotel Rwanda left you that messed up, don't read into the subject any more, it gets a hell of a lot worse.