Review of Hotel Rwanda (2004) by Riren — 25 Feb 2007
Hotel Rwanda benefits greatly from being based on true events - it prevents the audience from ever being able to deny what they have seen. You'll want to pretend what you've seen was never real because the movie saves up its violence.
Despite being set during a genocide, it is very sparing with the horrors it shows, giving each incident a much greater emotional impact. Don Cheadle's amazing performance as the movie's highly sympathetic and interesting main character serves as the backbone of the plot.
The events that bombard him are infinitely watchable and morbidly engrossing, and take your mind off the movie's few flaws. Hotel Rwanda does very little to explain the conflict between the Hutus and the Tutsis, and the genocidal antagonists are nearly all one-dimensional - plot points that are casualties to what this movie is about.
It isn't about the Rwandan holocaust, but the events in that man's life as Rwanda fell apart. Its messages are bitter, of shame to the foreigners who didn't care or didn't do anything to intervene, of native cowardice, and of the terror of irrational hatred and chaotic violence.
Yet it is not a hopeless movie, nor even a pessimistic movie. It's simply honest, and more emotionally balanced than you could expect it to be. And again, anything unrealistic is saved, because it really happened.
By far one of the best "based on a true story" movies to date.
This review of Hotel Rwanda (2004) was written by Riren on 25 Feb 2007.
Hotel Rwanda has generally received very positive reviews.
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