The depicted violence in Hotel Rwanda, the well-executed dramatization of how hotel manager Paul Rusesabagina sheltered more than a thousand refugees in his luxury hotel while genocide raged in the small African country in 1994, ramps up slowly. At first it is largely symbolic: a child's teddy bear impaled on a spear, a UN peacekeeper's bloody helmet cast upon the street. And director Terry George accomplishes his effects with very little visible gore. In fact, much of it is appears on the body of Rusesabagina's young son, cowering in the shrubs next to a neighbor's house—the blood is not his, but ominously we never learn whose it is.

But a drive along a strangely bumpy river road ultimately reveals the horrors of the ethnic murder, and Paul's delayed meltdown in reaction to it, as played by Don Cheadle, is equally hard to watch.

Finding himself thrust into an impossible situation, Rusesabagina deals with it in a businesslike manner, using all of the resources and skills at his disposal; Paul is a man who understands how things are done in Kigali. The film doesn't deal in psychologizing or sentimentalizing, although there is a moment not unlike Henry V's St. Crispin's Day speech when Rusesabagina tells his employees, "if you don't want to help me, leave now."

The tension is lightened with a few moments of gallows humor, as when a terrified woman tries to defend herself with a shower bath nozzle.

Fana Mokoena does well with the chewy role of General Augustin Bizimungo, a 5-star study in corruption with a taste for single malts and golfing vacations in Scotland.

posted: 11:53:49 PM  

11D points to YA poll for blog awards.

posted: 12:47:04 PM