HOTEL RWANDA – Don Cheadle
Hotel Rwanda (2004)
Direction: Terry George
Screenplay: Keir Pearson and Terry George
Cast: Don Cheadle, Sophie Okonedo, Nick Nolte, Joaquin Phoenix, Desmond Dube, Neil McCarthy, Jean Reno
In the second quarter of 1994, while much of the world was gearing up to the World Cup to be held in Los Angeles, one of history’s deadliest wholesale slaughters of human beings was taking place in Central Africa. Following the death of Rwanda’s President Juvenal Habyarimana, an ethnic Hutu whose plane was shot down above the Kigali airport on April 6, 1994, the Hutu powers-that-be decided it was time to eliminate the Tutsi minority who were blamed for the crash. What followed in the next three months was an orgy of hackings and shootings throughout the country of 7.6 million people that left more than 800,000 dead: Mostly Tutsis, but also those Hutus who refused to take part in the madness.
The Anglo-Italian-South African production Hotel Rwanda is set at the time of the genocide. The film’s focus, however, is not the free-for-all murders, but the real-life deeds of one Hutu man, Paul Rusesabagina, a hotel manager who, through a combination of bribes and diplomacy, saved the lives of 1,200 Tutsis and Hutus who had fled to his Hôtel de Mille Collines (Hotel of a Thousand Hills) while the rest of the world looked away.
Albeit marred by some Hollywood-inspired melodramatics, a screenplay (by director Terry George and Keir Pearson) that feels at times a tad too didactic, and an absurdly incongruous "happy" ending, Hotel Rwanda is still a powerful cinematic experience. The story itself carries enough emotional potency to propel any number of films, but what truly gives this motion picture its heart and soul is the superb performance by American actor Don Cheadle as the Rwandan hotel manager, who — ably assisted by British actress Sophie Okonedo as his Tutsi wife — comes across not as a movie hero but as a frightened human being struggling to stay afloat in an ocean of human evil.
Reviewed at the AFI FEST.
3 Academy Award Nominations
Best Actor: Don Cheadle
Best Supporting Actress: Sophie Okonedo
Best Original Screenplay: Keir Pearson, Terry George
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Tags: African Cinema, Don Cheadle, Film Reviews, Hotel Rwanda, Keir Pearson, Oscar 2004, Oscar Movies, Paul Rusesabagina, Political Movies, Sophie Okonedo, Terry George, Three-Star Movies, Three-Star Oscar Nominees
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This is sucha great and interesting movie it’s a shame it wasn’t as successful as it should have been, Don Cheadle does a great job.