Hotel Rwanda DVD

Advantages: A true story of heroic proportions.
Disadvantages: That it happened at all.

...Rusesabagina (Don Cheadle) is the hotel manager of the Milles Collines a Belgian owned hotel in Rwanda. When civil war breaks out between the Hutu And the Tutsis (the two main tribes). The Hutu want to wipe the Tutsis from the face of the earth because when the Belgians colonised Rwanda they gave the best jobs to Tutsis and let them rule the country. Now that the Belgians are gone the Hutu who regard Rwanda as their land want revenge, which is stirred ...
...Okonedo) a Tutsis, uses the hotel to shelter both Hutu (not caught up in the fervour) And Tutsis Refugees, He manages this by both bribes and influence. As the hotel fills with men, women and children Paul try's everything he can to keep them safe using money and whiskey to keep the local Hutu general on side in order to keep the rebels away and frantic phone calls abroad pleading for some kind of intervention. The UN who are led by the sympathetic ... Read review

Advantages: Superb acting, deeply moving story
Disadvantages: It really happened and we all let it

...Rusesabagina likes his job as hotel manager and is a good husband and father to wife Tatiana and their three children. When a politically active friend of his warns him that the Hutus are ready to rise up against their neighbours, the Tutsis, he dismisses it as war talk. Little does he know that everyone's worst nightmare is about to happen and thousands of Tutsis are to be slain. Paul is forced to shelter his family and neighbours in the hotel where ...
...is when he leaves the hotel to find supplies and finds himself in the midst of a sea of bodies - all dead - men, women and children - and I utterly believed that I was watching a man in denial of what was in front of his face. Superb. Paul's wife, Tatiana, is played by Sophie Okonedo, and again is superb as a woman terrified for her family. Some of her best moments are when she is trying to find news of her brother and sister-in-law and their children ... Read review

Advantages: Excellent performances by Cheadle and Okonedo, compelling (if disturbing) subject matter
Disadvantages: Not quite the classic it could have been

...The story revolves around hotel House Manager Paul Rusesabagina (Don Cheadle), a Hutu married to Tatiana, a Tutsi (Sophie Okonedo) who finds himself helping over a thousand refugees. He is not portrayed as a saintly figure by any means - in fact, his pragmatic and astute businessman persona reminded me very much of Schindler (indeed, the situation bears more than a few similarities to events preceding the World Wars, with an assassination sparking ...
...a Hutu working at the hotel who doesn't share Rusesabagina's tolerance of the "cockroaches", as the Tutsis are termed by the Hutu radio; a Red Cross worker; the President of Sabina, the Belgian company that owned the hotel, and an army General who helped Rusesabagina but not for any altruistic reasons. In fact, Rusesabagina surrounds himself with important people and pampers to their every whim in order to store up favours for his family if he ever ... Read review

Advantages: excellent performances, radical, realistic, educational, strong morality play
Disadvantages: distressing viewing

Hotel Rwanda is a disturbing film to watch, much like the yesterday's news that it reports. I remember when my father was watching the new reports of Kosovo and the Racak Massacre in 1999, and how the horrifying events and the actions of these "evil men", as he called them sent him further into depression, just by watching the news. I think that watching Hotel Rwanda has had a similar effect on me. It is a film that has put me at the forefront of ...
...by Don Cheadle), a Rwandan Hotel owner who becomes a humanitarian hero in the midst of Rwanda's civil war in 1994. As the political turmoil of guerrilla warfare and an assassination of the president ignites the old racial divides between the Hutus and the Tutsis of Rwanda, the Hutu-ran state armies and interwhami militia begin an ethnic cleansing of all their Tutsi neighbours. Paul (who is a Hutu, but shares marriage to Tatiana, a Tutsi woman with ... Read review

Advantages: true story
Disadvantages: none

Hotel Rwanda is one of the best true story's I have ever seen. It really does show you the horror and misfortune that goes un-noticed in some parts of the world. ------------- Plot Outline ------------- The story tells you of the worst genocide in African history, which took place in the country of Rwanda. Over a million people have been slaughtered in just a few short months, and no help is forthcoming. One man, a hotel manager plucks up the ...
...own family, by using his hotel as a refugee camp. Battling against incredible odds, with little help from the army, and his family and friends being murdered all around him, he is the only hope the refugees have. But time is running short, and death is knocking on every door. ------------ My Thoughts ------------ The movie is truly gripping with some most disturbing drama of events that you just won't believe could happen. It's a huge eye opener ... Read review