Paul Rusesabagina is managing the upscale Hotel Milles Collines in the city of Kigali when the genocide begins. He is Hutu. His wife is Tutsi. And in the beginning he is only willing to protect his own family. His mind changes when the atrocities escalate. And he turns the hotel into a refugee camp to secure the survival of more than 1,200 souls.
Move past the big picture, of race hatred, arbitrary maps and guilt over what the UN and the West can't or won't do, and find the human story within the inhumanity of war.
Big Picture Big Sound
July 14, 2007
The film belongs to Don Cheadle as Paul and, not surprisingly, he walks away with it.
Like "Schindler's List," "Hotel Rwanda" shows how the madness of genocide and war converted one man's context of wealth and success from capitalism to humanitarianism. Don Cheadle honors Paul Rusesabagina by tapping his brave face and internal rage.
Showing traces of the well-meaning paternalism that dogs many Western films about Africa, Hotel Rwanda doesn't go far enough in indicting Europeans and Americans for protecting their own while failing to intervene in time to stop the mass killings.
Eye for Film
December 07, 2007
This is a solid film, but it is the truth that holds the power, not the direction.
It has a genuine power: the ability of film to beam light onto dark days of history, making it impossible for us to look away, reminding us of what we should never forget.
ColeSmithey.com
April 16, 2009
Don Cheadle gives a beautifully restrained tour de force performance as a singular voice of reason at the epicenter of writer/director Terry George's depiction of Rwanda's outbreak of genocide in 1994 when Hutu militias slaughtered one million Tutsis with
The almost forgotten but all too real African genocide documented in Hotel Rwanda hits us as suddenly and as hard as it does Paul Rusesabagina, the accidental hero played so masterfully by Don Cheadle.
potentially fantastic material...unfortunately, [Terry] George's attempt is too mired in movie-of-the-week sensibilities...to do any justice to its subject matter
There's a tidiness and sense of convenience in the film's stock characterisations and button-pushing plotting that detracts from its impact. The film doesn't just contrive to contain the slaughter, but also its own anger.
