This movie is one of the most powerful of it's type. When it was first out, there were two other movies depicting the genocides and problems facing african nations. While each is very good, Hotel Rwanda is the best. It's simple story about a simple man saving hundreds of people, and the personal growth he experienced, reaches out across the Atlantic to touch all of us who watch it.

Paul's struggle to save first his family, then the hundreds who came to him forhelp, is very powerfully portrayed. I actually show this movie to my 9th graders as a lesson in non-print non-fiction. It has opened their eyes to what the rest of the world experiences and shows them more about what they've only heard bits and pieces of. many of them actually did their research papers on related topics, expanding on what they had learned.

I have not seen this movie. From the comments I did read I feel Hollywood has once again taken facts and Holywood-ized them. The main character had only a minimal role and pretty much didn't have a choice to help out.
To make a factual assessment of the Genocide in Rwanda you should read the book "Shake Hands with the Devil" by Romeo Dallaire. He was the General in charge of the UN forces there at the time. It outlines the complete futility of the mission, the inept UN Organization in New York, the lack of cooperation and lies from the waring parties. Most importantly the way the world turned it's back on Rwanda, specifically the United States. These brave Countries had assessed there was no "value" or "gain" in helping Rwanda.
Read the book.

Don Cheadle, as Paul Ruseasabagina, the Rwandan Manager of a 4-star hotel which serves as a haven for Europeans and African Elites, gives a performance that is at once measured, controlled and deeply anguished. As a fact-based but fictionalized account, "Hotel Rwanda" captures the horror and absolute madness of racially-based war that had its origins in European colonialization when the Germans (and later the Belgians, to much more devastating effect) exalted the Tutsis (for the their more "European" physical characteristics) as the prominent ruling class over the Hutus. The ebb and flow of decades-long resentments finally came to a head in 1994, when close to a million Tutsis were felled in a horrific blood-bath--and all in the face of European and American indifference.

Cheadle's Ruseasabagina (a Hutu who is married to a Tutsi, played by Sophie Okonedo )first shows an unremarkable decency that ascends to heroic proportions as he risks the lives of himself and family, attempting to shield and help well over 1200 people--first by crowding them into his Hotel, a temporary "safe house" and then by bartering transportation away from the encroaching Hutu militia. The film's intensity is heightened by the fact that many surviving Rwandan refugees from that era were recruited as extras--essentially reliving, in a sense, a most horrendous nightmare. The movie also benefits enormously from provocative performances given by Sophie Okonedo (as Tatiana, his long-suffering wife); Nick Nolte who, as the near-ineffectual commander of UN peacekeepers, gets across the utter shame and disgust felt by many who were essentially powerless to stop the massacre; and Joaquin Phoenix in a bit part as a randy reporter who has an affair with a local Tutsi and then abandons her as casually as one would an anonymous call girl.

I gave this as a gift. They were very pleased as they had been to Africa that year and said it depicted some of the areas they travelled.

There was essentially one scene in this movie that summed up the entire ordeal better than the two hours of Cheadle's camera mugging. The bodies laying strewn about the road side when the fog lifted. That's it. The rest of the screenplay was fairly safe and dumbed down for the masses to enjoy. I see many 5-star reviewers tossing out comparisons to "Schindler's List". Good heavens, both films deal with mass murder. That is where the similarities end. For starters, Nick Nolte is horribly mis-cast as the U.N. commander. He stumbles through his lines like a drunkard and his attempts at anger become cartoonish. There is a constant anti-white theme throughout the film as well that I found irritating. I understand this is Cheadles thing now...cough Crash cough...The only white cast member not displayed as a rich, callous, and soul-less blob is the woman working for the Red Cross. Nolte's little speech about Africans made to Cheadle is laughable and seems like it was tossed in just in case the average viewer had missed the obvious agenda.

In closing, the Rwandan genocide was obviously a terrible period in world history. However, I don't need to sit and watch a movie which, for two hours, attempts to make the American and British governments look bad. When large countries get involved in affairs they are considered bullies and "global policeman." When they do not get involved they are considered callous and heartless. Can't have it both ways there folks, but I guess people like to reserve the right to complain no matter what politicians do.