Rating of
3/4
"Hotel Rwanda" by Yojimbo
Yojimbo - wrote on 03/23/12
Like The Killing Fields, Salvador and Schindler's List before it, Hotel Rwanda catalogues yet another example of the human race's remarkable talent for inhumanity. Don Cheadle gives a career best performance as a hotel manager who uses all his intelligence and guile to help save over 1200 refugees from the genocidal rampage of Hutu militants. The rest of the cast also put in the kind of committed performances actors give when they truly believe that a story must be told and although it is a little manipulative, it's never heavy handed or clumsy. I must admit, I didn't realise that the cultural segregation of the Tutsis and the Hutus was just an arbitrary division created by long gone occupying colonialism and the film gives a welcome lesson in the cause and nature of the conflict. It also serves as yet another reminder that the opulent west is very good at making worthy popular entertainment that documents such atrocities, even shedding a tear when reminded of their existence. But we never seem to do a damn thing when it actually counts.
