Hotel Rwanda (2004)

Human beings easily forget, even if what we are forgetting are horrible atrocities. And sometimes not only do we forget easily, but we also turn a blind eye altogether. Hotel Rwanda, a chilling drama about the Rwandan genocides that occurred in the early 1990s, is a slap to the cheek to all of us who chose to ignore what was happening.
The film stars Don Cheadle as Paul Rusesabagina, a well-off Rwandan manager of a international hotel. He is smooth talking and has the street smarts, allowing him to store up favors with all kinds of powerful people in case times go bad, and of course he makes sure business is good. Paul is a Hutu, the ethnic group that is dominant in Rwanda. His wife is a Tutsi, a smaller minority which was once the ruling class. There is bitter hatred between the two groups, because the Hutus were once oppressed, but now the tables have been turned.
As we soon find out - sooner than Paul, who is reluctant to believe - the Hutu militias are planning a systematic wipe-out of the Tutsis. It soon becomes very real, as Paul's neighbors are murdered brutally. Paul takes his family, and many other Tutsi neighbors, to the hotel.
The hotel soon becomes a refuge shelter, crammed with Tutsis in hiding. The white people are soon evacuated, of course, and Paul's hopes of the UN keeping order soon turns into despair, as Colonel Oliver (the ever-so brilliant Nick Nolte), the commander of the UN forces, tells him that the western countries aren't sending more troops and he could at most spare 4 men, who aren't allowed to fire unless being fired upon. "You're dirt," Colonel Oliver stutters to Paul in total despair, in one of the film's most powerful scenes. Nobody cares about their lives at all.
Yet Paul doesn't give up. Not because he is unselfishly altruistic, but because he loves his family so much. Indeed, Paul's biggest motivation in his efforts is his family, and it's simply basic human empathy he is showing while he cares for those others in need.
Paul eventually prevails, saving his family and some 1,000 others. But many others are not so fortunate, as we are reminded in the ending credits that over 1 million people were killed, while the rest of the world stood by and watched. Indeed, such a failure is not only a failure for the western democracies, but for all countries of the world.
Hotel Rwanda is powerfully made, mainly because of Don Cheadle. He shows many different layers of his character's inner world, and in one most memorable scene, he demonstrates that even something as simple as doing his tie can effuse such emotion.
That being said, the film could certainly have been taken to a even higher level. I felt that the overall portrayal, while effective, did not fully stimulate our conscience. Many have raised Schindler's List as a film with a similar theme, and indeed this film could learn something from Mr. Spielberg's masterpiece. Still, Hotel Rwanda deserves praise, and is a film everyone should see, so that we might learn a lesson, and not turn a blind eye to nor forget such atrocities.
8/10