Time Out says
Knuckling down to a native accent and keeping a lid on his wits, Cheadle carries the story, but there’s a tension between the focus on his heroics and the film’s wider hand-wringing project (we get Nick Nolte as a self-disgustedly impotent UN colonel, and Joaquin Phoenix as a briefly daring Irish photographer whose long lens captures one of the film’s few images of actual carnage). That tension might be fruitful, and one can debate how much of the carnage beyond the hotel’s precarious sanctuary the film needs to screen – its strongest scene sees Rusesabagina floundering among an unparted sea of corpses that he’d unwittingly been driving over in the dawn fog. But there’s a tidiness and sense of convenience in the film’s stock characterisations and button-pushing plotting that detracts from its impact. The film doesn’t just contrive to contain the slaughter, but also its own anger.
Release Details
- Release date:Friday 25 February 2005
- Duration:121 mins
Cast and crew
- Director:Terry George
- Cast:
- Joaquin Phoenix
- Nick Nolte
- Sophie Okonedo
- Don Cheadle
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