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tragic, moving, and exceptional. Hotel Rwanda is an inexplicably exceptional, profoundly moving film that follows hotel manager Paul Rusesabagina [Don Cheadle] as he houses genocidal victims. Rusesabagina is a consummate professional, and this professionalism allows him the ability to exhibit the pure, human heroics needed in such a truly horrifying crisis. He finds himself using his Hotu status to protect more than a thousand Tutsis from being hunted and slaughtered to death in his four star hotel, remaining throughout an essentially human leader. The film begins with a black screen and a Hotu radio announcer instructing fellow Hotus of what the tribe feels to be necessary ethnic cleansing. As a film, Hotel Rwanda is shot very efficiently, with great music, very authentic design and overall great writing save a few [completely deserved] noticeably dramatic one-liners. Yet none of the technical details are ever called to attention, none of the absolutely perfect acting is ever called to the forefront, instead existing completely secondary to the incredibly tragic nature of the story. The film is shot with such clarity it initially feels slightly too modern despite the 1994 setting, and feels vaguely disorganized with its meek first act, yet these superficial critiques are forgotten immediately. Action in the film is gradual until the moment Hotu's arrive outside of the Rusesabagina's fenced-in home with machetes, when the film completely takes command of its audience, putting them in the breath-holding throes of tension and tragedy. Hotel Rwanda, being a film regarding a horrendous genocide, could very easily be a bombastic blood fest, yet remains much more subtle. It is presented with utmost efficiency, and with utmost care to the humans making their best efforts to deal with this situation. Instead of being exploitative of the occurrences, the film is a careful examination of human coping skills, which may be flawed but can embody true strength, over hatred. This examination of humanity demands, in the most modest manner possible for such a strong situation, that the audience feel disgusted enough by the sheer thought that such atrocities can exist. They aren't forced to witness the full scope of mass bloodshed that actually occurred to feel this way, but are instead provoked into remembering that caring for other human beings is absolutely essential. Instead of making the audience feel revolted by constant graphic imagery, this film remains understated, and makes them feel revolted inside for knowing that such strong and irrational hatred that came from the Hotus is very real, and can occur in modernity. Those depicted in this film aren't savages living in an obscure nowhere where such things seem to happen, but are instead generally sort of suburban. They wear ties to work. They look like us, could be our neighbors, and this familiarity, this obvious modernity sends a very terrifying thread down the spine of all of us, knowing that tragedy is not something constrained to obscure and distant places. Its terrifying to think that such a thing can occur, and even more disgusting to think of the helplessness of their seclusion, the desperate attempts for some human assistance being ignored by political red tape. It's the sort of film that causes one to leave the theatre much less cynical than when they went in; much less critical of their irrelevant priorities and more cognizant of the value of human life. It makes films about superficialities seem silly and small, reveals the ignored privileges of our lives, and demands us to wake up from our lives of misplaced priorities to actually remember to love one another.