Hotel Rwanda

If you've read Philip Gourevitch's deeply moving book on Rwanda, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families, you'll know what to expect from Terry George's Hotel Rwanda. One of the many heart-breaking stories from that powerful book which detailed the insane genocide of 1994 Rwanda centred on Paul Rusesabagina (played here with impressive authority by Don Cheadle), the manager of a Belgian-owned hotel situated in Kigali. While his country was divided between two major warring groupings, the Hutus and Tutsis, Paul - a very moderate Hutu - remains dutifully apolitical, putting his family and job ahead of any tribal allegiance. As civil unrest grew in his country and the Hutus went on a murderous rampage - killing almost a million of their country men in an eight week spree - UN peacekeepers, like Colonel Oliver (Nick Nolte), were powerless to intervene, leaving the likes of Rusesabagina to fend for themselves in the face of overwhelming odds.

It would be all too easy to dub Hotel Rwanda an African Schlinder's List, but Terry George and his screenwriter Keir Peirson have elected to centre on the quandary facing Rusesabagina and his growth from a man into a hero. Resisting the temptation to overpower the audience with scenes of carnage, the filmmakers are sparing in their usage of horrific images, focusing instead on the moral quandary faced by their protagonist. Inevitably, this leads to some problems - in order to maximise the tension there are concessions' made regarding the number of close scrapes that Rusesabagina, his Tutsi wife (played by an Academy Award nominated Sophie Okonedo) and their three children have to endure. But the scathing tone of the film regarding the west's non-involvement and the sheer force of Cheadle's performance makes Hotel Rwanda a very worthy excursion.