Picture This! Reviews Hotel Rwanda

Checking In: “Hotel Rwanda”
“The same frozen silence occurred when the audience filed passed me as the credits rolled…”
By Rebecca Redshaw

Flashback 1970 – I remember being frozen in my seat when the credits rolled on Coming Home, the Viet Nam drama set, not in the jungles of Southeast Asia, but in a veterans’ hospital. Where was I when this was going down? Why wasn’t I involved?

I was a college senior entrenched in getting my degree so I could get a job so I could pay for the education I had received. Hardly an excuse for my lack of involvement, but the movie changed my perception of war. It made me reflect on the consequences of combat and its impact on the soldiers returning home.

No matter that it was Jane Fonda and John Voigt that stunned me into reality. Far more important was the awakening.

Present 2005 – Have I really changed so little? The same frozen silence occurred when the audience filed passed me as credits rolled. Like Coming Home, Hotel Rwanda tells the story of a man of principle, a man of honor placed in an untenable and dangerous situation. But this man is not a soldier in the traditional sense.

Don Cheadle, as Paul Rusesabagina, works in a posh Belgium hotel in Rwanda in 1994. Smooth and efficient, his skills of unobtrusively catering to the rich are subtle and he accommodates every day challenges effortlessly.

But life beyond the manicured gardens is in turmoil. An uprising of opposing political groups is imminent and the call for genocide is broadcast over inflammatory radio airwaves. Thousands upon thousands of people are literally butchered as rebels armed with machetes take to the streets.

Paul, abandoned by whites who flee for their lives, finds himself in charge of the staff. He moves his family into the hotel to protect them and they are followed by relatives, friends, and, as word spreads, hundreds of others who fear for their lives. The man literally uses whatever means necessary to protect people that come to him.

Hotel Rwanda is a brilliant film. Cheadle is one of our finest actors. The power he brings to the story is so tempered with finesse you forget he’s an actor in a role.

Sophie Okonedo who plays his wife, delivers an equally moving performance and their intimate moments on screen reveal a tenderness and humor that one hopes would prevail even in the worst of times.

In bringing this story to the screen, director Terry George challenges the viewer to get involved, to care about his fellow man whether across the street or around the world.

See this movie.
Rebecca Redshaw is the Arts& Entertainment Critic for www.NotesFromHollywood.com. She can be reached at r2redshaw@hotmail.com.