DVD Review: Hotel Rwanda grows on you even before you realise it

Title: Hotel Rwanda
Language: English
Director: Terry George
Rating: ****

The way this film opens, it doesn’t let you prepare for the way it ends. Anybody who is acquainted with the high life and page three parties will perfectly identify with the way the film opens. And anybody who has found himself in a curfew-hit city will surprisingly find a similarity to the extreme drama towards the end. The film grows on you even before you realise it.

The film is set in 1994, during the infamous Rwandan Genocide which took the life of eight lakh people belonging to the Tutsi tribe. It is about a manager of a star hotel who gives shelter to thousands of Tutsi people inside the hotel and saves them from being killed. Because of the strange similarity, this Academy nominated film is sometimes referred to as the Schindler’s List of Africa. It is based on the life of Paul Rusesabagina who has been honoured for saving 1,268 refugees during the Rwandan Genocide when he was the assistant manager of the Sabena Hotel des Mille Collines.

With the opening scenes of the Rwandan high life where people are oblivious of the bloody war that was going on outside their gates, the film slowly veers towards the gory details. The film grips you when the rising tension between the Hutu and Tutsi peoples lead to a war.

As situations spin out of control, Paul sees his neighbours getting killed even as he managed to speak to a few influential people, sometimes bribing them with money and alcohol, to ensure that his family is kept safe. Paul finally gets through to the Rwandan chief of Army, Augustin Bizimungu, and blackmails him and forces him to create a layer of protection around his family and the refugees at the hotel who are finally able to leave the besieged hotel in a UN convoy.