Review of Hotel Rwanda (2004) by Martin R — 27 Apr 2014

Hotel Rwanda is a biographical historical drama about one man (Paul) who shelters over a thousand refugees in 'his' hotel at a time when genocide is taking place in his country in 1994. One of the film's remarkable feats is its ability to shock its audience and create tension by hinting at horrible acts of slaughter instead of showing them in your face.

The lack of graphic reenactments of violence in Hotel Rwanda allows its stellar cast to deliver some of the most (realistic) moving performances in modern cinema. Don Cheadle in particular carries the bulk of the acting in this film, but you never doubt the guy for a second, and that's not to underplay the performances of the rest of the cast.

Shifting gears a bit, the 1994 Rwandan genocide event is notable for its (almost ironic) absence of the United States and the other Western powers. "rwanda's not worth a single vote to them," a statement from the film, is a blatant attack on America's (and the rest of the world's) silence on the matter.

And now, 20 years later [4/28/14], there remains a lot of 'no-talk' on a number of important issues that face us--not as a country, but as living organisms on this planet that we share with non-human organisms--why? How is it possible that beings, capable of incredible feats of engineering, art, music, critical thought, etc, are blind (or simply choose to look past) to problems/dilemmas/etc that Need to addressed? It's easy to say that we will never forget about the holocaust .

...but then what happened in Rwanda? Is there anything else happening at this very moment that needs to be stopped? I don't have any answers, but there's thing I know for sure--for the most part--not a single damn one of us has learned from "acts of genocide".

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