Hotel Rwanda --- an Italo-British-South African co-production --- is not for the weak of hearts.
In the middle of its first screening today, a woman near me at the first row of the upper section shamelessly sobbed and later screamed to end the movie.
That was the same feeling I had except that I was not about to scream. But this movie by one who styled himself as Terry George was so powerful I wanted to stop watching it.
Hotel Rwanda is about the ethnic conflict between the Hutus and the Tutsis. The Tutsis were an intenerant Rwandan tribe. The Hutus were a creation of the colonizing Belgians. Prior to the departure of the Belgians, the more capable among the Tutsis were running the government. When the Belgian finally left, the had the Hutus in the government, marginalizing the Tutsis.
If Antoine Fuqua's "Tears of the Sun" tore your heart to pieces, Terry George's "Hotel Rwanda" will dry you out enough to suffocate you from his sensitively assaulting screenplay and visual treatment of the whole story.