Hotel Rwanda Review
by Harvey S. Karten (harveycritic AT cs DOT com)December 21st, 2004
HOTEL RWANDA
Reviewed by Harvey S. Karten
United Artists
Grade: B+
Directed by: Terry George
Written by: Keir Pearson, Terry George
Cast: Don Cheadle, Sophie Okonedo, Nick Nolte, Joaquin
Phoenix
Screened at: MGM, NYC, 11/11/04
Ask our nation's youth who their heroes are and you'll be rewarded with either a blank stare or a one- or two-word reply like Michael Jackson or Madonna. In my view, the real heroes are those who have saved many lives at great risks to their own, some of whom have had films paying homage to them.
Every moviegoer has seen the work of Oskar Schindler, who saved the lives of more than one thousand Polish Jews by employing them in his factory, manufacturing crockery for the German army. "Schindler's List," filmed entirely on location is Poland, is gritty and fast paced, given a distinctive look by Steven Spielberg. In the same regard, "Hotel Rwanda," filmed by Terry George ("Some Mother's Son"), emotionally dramatizes events in Rwanda in 1994 in which the manager of the Hotel Milles Collines in the nation's capital of Kigali, saved over twelve hundred countrymen of both tribes during a civil war that killed almost a million people. "Hotel Rwanda" could have competed with "Schindler's List" as a uniquely felt contribution but the film often lapses into the kind of swelling music that tells us that a director does not fully trust an audience to grasp the heroism of its principal character without blasting them with an emotional soundtrack.
Nonetheless, given the Oscar-worthy performance of Don Cheadle, "Hotel Rwanda" is well worth seeing, not only to watch a truly special performance by one of the world great thesps but as well as an indictment of the world for cowardice, particularly the Europeans and Americans, who refused to intervene while genocidal crimes were taking place in that unfortunate but beautiful country.
It pays not to go into this film cold, but rather to have at least an outline of the history of Rwanda, which is about the size of the state of Maryland. While the present population is 84% Hutus with a minority of 15% in the Tutsi clan, the Tutsis arrived some five hundred years ago, a wealthy, livestock-owning tribe. While the Hutus were a majority, the Tutsis managed to subjugate them. When the Germans, who made a protectorate of Rwanda along with Tanzania, were defeated in World War I, the Belgian army took control, preferring to give administrative jobs to the "more elegant" and taller Tutsis–which infuriated the Hutus. A Hutu rebellion in 1959 threw the Tutsis out of power, a general staged a coup in 1973 while a group of Tutsi exiles formed a Rwandan Patriotic Front and invaded Rwanda from Uganda, starting a civil war. When Major General Habyarimana was assassinated in a plane crash by a Hutu who blamed the Tutsis, roaming Hutu bands roamed about killing by machete while the U.N. reduced its peacekeeping force. Western powers failed to do anything to stop the violence.
As "Hotel Rwanda" begins, we encounter the manager of the Hotel Milles Collines, Paul Rusesabagina (Don Cheadle), who makes sure that his guests, primarily Europeans, are treated as would be expected by a four-star hotel. When tensions surrounding the death of the Hutu president break loose, machete-armed Hutu begin slaughtering their Tutsi neighbors -- who look no different from the Hutus but are known tribally by their names and by the identification on their papers. When hundreds of Tutsi refugees, their homes burned, seek shelter inside the hotel, Rusesabagina takes them in, bribing the general in charge of the Hutu militia with Scotch, beer and money. Despite calls Rusesabagina makes to the influential head (Jean Reno) of the Sabena corporation in Brussels–which owns the hotel–no help is forthcoming from the Europeans, nor is the U.N. allowed even to use their weapons to intervene in the slaughter.
Director and co-writer Terry George takes us close-up into the killing fields as half-crazed uniformed soldiers fire bullets wildly into the air, shooting Tutsis on the way but preferring the use of the machete as the weapon of execution. While Rusesabagina, himself is threatened from time to time as a "moderate" Hutu–that is one who is harboring what the government especially through its radio station calls "cockroaches," he manages to save the 1200 refugees until they can get exit visas and receive sanctuary in Tanzania, Kenya, and Belgium.
The romance, such as it exists at all, involves Paul's relationship with his weepy and frankly annoying wife (Sophie Okonedo), and a small part played by Joaquin Phoenix as a photojournalist who becomes involved with a Rwandan woman.
Robert Fraisse's photography in South Africa evokes the spirit of the land while Andrea Guerra's music, sometimes overwrought where visuals should alone carry the emotions, is mostly on target.
Rated PG-13. 121 minutes. © 2004 by Harvey Karten
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