Hotel Rwanda Review
by Jon Popick (jpopick AT sick-boy DOT com)December 20th, 2004
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Terry George, former cohort of In America filmmaker Jim Sheridan, tells the story of Africa's version of Oskar Schindler in Hotel Rwanda, winner of the audience award at the Toronto International Film Festival this past fall. The audiences in Toronto are usually deft at picking Oscar contenders from the hundreds of pictures in that festival's lineup (Shine, American Beauty, Life is Beautiful, Crouching Tiger), but lately, their tastes have parted with those of the Academy voters (Whale Rider, Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi, and now, Hotel).
Hotel is one of those films that, if a critic doesn't think it walks on water, will receive nasty backlash because of the importance of the movie's subject matter: The bloody 1994 genocide in Rwanda. So, for the record, I am not for genocide, even though I don't think Hotel is a particularly good picture.
Don Cheadle, sporting a flimsier accent than in Ocean's Twelve, stars as Paul Rusesabagina, a hotel manager who successfully saved the lives of over a thousand Tutsi civilians at a time when, left to their own devices, they would have been slaughtered by marauding Hutu militia. George and co-writer Keir Peaeron gloss over the big picture history of the region, making Hotel a slightly better, slightly more expensive version of something you'd see as a television movie of the week.
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
