Hotel Rwanda (2004)

Directed by Terry George. Starring Don Cheadle, Sophie Okonedo, Nick Nolte, Cara Seymour, Fana Mokoena, Joaquin Phoenix, Tony Kgoroge, Desmond Dube, Jean Reno, David O’Hara, Hakeem Kae-Kazim, Leleti Khumalo. [PG-13]

Suitably harrowing dramatization of the 1994 Tutsi genocide in Rwanda, honing in on the plight of hotel manager, Paul Rusesabagina (Cheadle), who used his establishment to shelter hundreds of refugees from the brutal local Hutu militia. Sweeping political gestures and painstaking pedagogy are sidelined in favor of a more personal approach, limiting the information (and horrors) to Rusesabagina’s first-hand experiences and second-hand accounts from the shopworn outsider emblems, including journalists, Red Cross workers, and a raspy UN colonel played by Nolte. This strategy muddles blame (and dilutes shame), exposing weaknesses in director George’s by-the-numbers human-courage approach, but at least it succeeds within the scheme of its limited intentions, crushing spirits only to raise them again by the finale. Cheadle gives a remarkably assured and convincing performance as the career-minded Hutu, and Okenedo (as his Tutsi wife) goes the necessary lengths to earn her showy emotional breakdowns. Reno went unbilled.

77/100