HOTEL RWANDA on DVD
March 24th, 2005 by Andre Soares
How to convey on the big screen a tragedy of unimaginable proportions such as the 1994 Tutsi genocide in Rwanda?
Hotel Rwanda’s co-screenwriters Terry George (who also directed) and Keir Pearson have chosen to focus on the plight of one man, Paul Rusesabagina, an African version of Oskar Schindler of Schindler’s List fame. Rusesabagina was the Rwandan hotel manager who is credited with saving the lives of more than 1,200 people at a time when Hutu militias were slaughtering wholesale hundreds of thousands of Tutsis and their Hutu rescuers.
The movies’ Paul Rusesabagina, however, is considerably more believable than the movies’ Oskar Schindler because, unlike Steven Spielberg’s hero, the frightened but sly Rwandan hotel manager comes across as genuinely human. Rusesabagina’s verisimilitude is mostly due to Academy Award nominee Don Cheadle’s superb, unaffected performance. As a plus, Cheadle is well supported by fellow nominee (in the supporting category) Sophie Okonedo, who, without much help from the script, manages to express more than plain victimhood as Rusesabagina’s Tutsi wife.
True, Hotel Rwanda has flaws, including an excess of melodrama and a patently absurd "happy" ending that betrays the horrors shown (not to mention those not shown) on screen. But then again, at least this phony finale has no tearful exclamations of the sort, "I could’ve done more!"
Hotel Rwanda Region 1 DVD (U.S. / Canada) release date: April 12, 2005
- Picture: Widescreen
- Audio: English (5.1 Surround), French (Stereo Surround)
- Subtitles: English, French, Spanish
- Audio Commentary by director Terry George and Paul Rusesabagina, with additional commentary by Wyclef Jean
- Selected scenes commentary by Don Cheadle
- "’A Message for Peace: Making Hotel Rwanda" featurette
- "Return to Rwanda" documentary
- Original theatrical trailer
List price: US$26.99.
A Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer release.
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