I read the following review a while ago and was stoked. Now I see Don Cheadle on the Daily Show the other day and CNN was just doing a bit about the film this morning...sounds like it's really something worth seeing!
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Eyes wide shut
The world looked away when evil swept through Rwanda. Ten years later, a movie demands that we finally open our eyes.
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By Charles Taylor
Dec. 22, 2004 | In "Hotel Rwanda" it's a few days into the 1994 genocide in which the majority Hutu tribe would eventually slaughter nearly a million of their Tutsi countrymen with no interference from the West. Refugees have holed up at the Mille Collines luxury hotel in Kigali, Rwanda's capital, waiting for the international intervention forces they expect to protect them from the marauding Hutus. Colonel Oliver (Nick Nolte), who's in charge of the U.N. peacekeeping forces, greets the arriving international troops with relief that, in just a few seconds, turns to disgust.
Following Oliver into the hotel bar, the manager of the Mille Collines, Paul Rusesabagina (Don Cheadle), congratulates the colonel on how well he has protected the refugees while awaiting the international forces. What Paul doesn't know, and what Colonel Oliver has to break to him, is that the forces are there only to provide safe passage out of Rwanda for Europeans. They will do nothing to stop the slaughter or aid the Tutsis. The scene that follows between Cheadle and Nolte is so emotionally violent that it takes you a few seconds to register that you're hearing what you're hearing.
"You should spit in my face," says Colonel Oliver to Paul. "You're dirt. We think you're dirt, Paul ... The West, all the superpowers ... They think you're dirt. They think you're dung ... You're not even a nigger. You're African."
It's a shocking moment (did Nolte just tell Cheadle he's "not even a nigger"?), one that punches out its meaning in the bold typeface style of a tabloid headline. There's nothing artful about it, and yet it contains the heart of this shattering movie.
More from Salon review (a lot more, get the daypass if you're not a subsciber):
http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/review/2004/12/22/hotel_rwanda/
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