Description
Once you find out what happened in Rwanda, you'll never forget. OscarÂ(r) nominee* Don Cheadle (Traffic) gives "the performance of his career in this extraordinarily powerful" (The Hollywood Reporter) and moving true story of one man's brave stance against savagery during the 1994 Rwandan conflict. Sophie Okonedo (Dirty Pretty Things) co-stars as the loving wife who challenges a good man to become a great man. As his country descends into madness, five-star-hotel manager Paul Rusesabagina (Cheadle) sets out to save his family. But when he sees that theworld will not intervene in the massacre of minority Tutsis, he finds the courage to open his hotelto more than 1,200 refugees. Now, with a rabid militia at the gates, he must use his well-honed grace, flattery and cunning to protect his guests from certain death. *2004: Actor, Hotel Rwanda

Amazon.com
Solidly built around a subtle yet commanding performance by Don Cheadle, Hotel Rwanda emerged as one of the most highly-praised dramas of 2004. In a role that demands his quietly riveting presence in nearly every scene, Cheadle plays real-life hero Paul Rusesabagina, a hotel manager in the Rwandan capital of Kigali who in 1994 saved 1,200 Rwandan "guests" from certain death during the genocidal clash between tribal Hutus, who slaughtered a million victims, and the horrified Tutsis, who found safe haven or died. Giving his best performance since his breakthrough role in Devil in a Blue Dress, Cheadle plays Rusesabagina as he really was during the ensuing chaos: "an expert in situational ethics" (as described by critic Roger Ebert), doing what he morally had to do, at great risk and potential sacrifice, with an understanding that wartime negotiations are largely a game of subterfuge, cooperation, and clever bribery. Aided by a United Nations official (Nick Nolte), he worked a saintly miracle, and director Terry George (Some Mother's Son) brings formidable social conscience to bear on a true story you won't soon forget. --Jeff Shannon

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 320 reviews)

Powerfully Amazing!

This movie is one of the most powerful of it's type. When it was first out, there were two other movies depicting the genocides and problems facing african nations. While each is very good, Hotel Rwanda is the best. It's simple story about a simple man saving hundreds of people, and the personal growth he experienced, reaches out across the Atlantic to touch all of us who watch it.

Paul's struggle to save first his family, then the hundreds who came to him forhelp, is very powerfully portrayed. I actually show this movie to my 9th graders as a lesson in non-print non-fiction. It has opened their eyes to what the rest of the world experiences and shows them more about what they've only heard bits and pieces of. many of them actually did their research papers on related topics, expanding on what they had learned.
August 23, 2008

Read the book

I have not seen this movie. From the comments I did read I feel Hollywood has once again taken facts and Holywood-ized them. The main character had only a minimal role and pretty much didn't have a choice to help out.
To make a factual assessment of the Genocide in Rwanda you should read the book "Shake Hands with the Devil" by Romeo Dallaire. He was the General in charge of the UN forces there at the time. It outlines the complete futility of the mission, the inept UN Organization in New York, the lack of cooperation and lies from the waring parties. Most importantly the way the world turned it's back on Rwanda, specifically the United States. These brave Countries had assessed there was no "value" or "gain" in helping Rwanda.
Read the book.
June 29, 2008

Powerful and stunning fictionalized (but fact-based) history

Don Cheadle, as Paul Ruseasabagina, the Rwandan Manager of a 4-star hotel which serves as a haven for Europeans and African Elites, gives a performance that is at once measured, controlled and deeply anguished. As a fact-based but fictionalized account, "Hotel Rwanda" captures the horror and absolute madness of racially-based war that had its origins in European colonialization when the Germans (and later the Belgians, to much more devastating effect) exalted the Tutsis (for the their more "European" physical characteristics) as the prominent ruling class over the Hutus. The ebb and flow of decades-long resentments finally came to a head in 1994, when close to a million Tutsis were felled in a horrific blood-bath--and all in the face of European and American indifference.

Cheadle's Ruseasabagina (a Hutu who is married to a Tutsi, played by Sophie Okonedo )first shows an unremarkable decency that ascends to heroic proportions as he risks the lives of himself and family, attempting to shield and help well over 1200 people--first by crowding them into his Hotel, a temporary "safe house" and then by bartering transportation away from the encroaching Hutu militia. The film's intensity is heightened by the fact that many surviving Rwandan refugees from that era were recruited as extras--essentially reliving, in a sense, a most horrendous nightmare. The movie also benefits enormously from provocative performances given by Sophie Okonedo (as Tatiana, his long-suffering wife); Nick Nolte who, as the near-ineffectual commander of UN peacekeepers, gets across the utter shame and disgust felt by many who were essentially powerless to stop the massacre; and Joaquin Phoenix in a bit part as a randy reporter who has an affair with a local Tutsi and then abandons her as casually as one would an anonymous call girl.
May 29, 2008

dvd

I gave this as a gift. They were very pleased as they had been to Africa that year and said it depicted some of the areas they travelled.
April 07, 2008

Basically one moving scene

There was essentially one scene in this movie that summed up the entire ordeal better than the two hours of Cheadle's camera mugging. The bodies laying strewn about the road side when the fog lifted. That's it. The rest of the screenplay was fairly safe and dumbed down for the masses to enjoy. I see many 5-star reviewers tossing out comparisons to "Schindler's List". Good heavens, both films deal with mass murder. That is where the similarities end. For starters, Nick Nolte is horribly mis-cast as the U.N. commander. He stumbles through his lines like a drunkard and his attempts at anger become cartoonish. There is a constant anti-white theme throughout the film as well that I found irritating. I understand this is Cheadles thing now...cough Crash cough...The only white cast member not displayed as a rich, callous, and soul-less blob is the woman working for the Red Cross. Nolte's little speech about Africans made to Cheadle is laughable and seems like it was tossed in just in case the average viewer had missed the obvious agenda.

In closing, the Rwandan genocide was obviously a terrible period in world history. However, I don't need to sit and watch a movie which, for two hours, attempts to make the American and British governments look bad. When large countries get involved in affairs they are considered bullies and "global policeman." When they do not get involved they are considered callous and heartless. Can't have it both ways there folks, but I guess people like to reserve the right to complain no matter what politicians do.
March 07, 2008

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