Hotel Rwanda and Million $ Baby Reviews
There are two movies playing that I would recommend: Hotel Rwanda, and Million Dollar Baby.
I’m a big fan of Don Cheadle (he was great in Traffic as well, which was my favorite drug movie) and he does a convincing job in this film. Also was impressed by Sophie Okonedo who played an entirely different character from the first time I saw her (as a prostitute in Dirty Pretty Things – which was also an excellent film).
Overall, I felt that that the movie was very moving despite the obvious omision of much of the brutality that actually did occur. However, I thought that by avoiding showing grotesque violence, the director was able to avoid any distractions from the human story. Violence has definitely been cheapened by Hollywood, and I think he made smart decision by not creating a film that sickens you with its gore.
On the other hand, over 800,000 people were brutally slaughtered, and, as some of my friends agree, by not showing violence, you don’t show what really happened.
Related to this film is the book Shake Hands with the Devil: The failure of humanity in Rwanda. I haven’t read it yet, but probably will – There was also a CBC documentary released in conjunction with the book.
Clint Eastwood is on point.
90% of what he has produced in the last 15 years has been gold (except for the brutal, brutal white hunter, black heart).
Hilary Swank and Morgan Freeman are excellent as would be expected.
The performance of Hilary Swank was especially impressive, because she was able to convincingly represent an athlete. This is harder than you would expect (One of the worst examples is Matt Damon in Bourne Supremacy, where he goes for a jog on the beach, and looks like he’s just had a colonoscopy – there’s no athlete in the world that runs like that, they should have got someone to teach him how to run). She must have trained like a madwoman, because she is jacked in the movie.
Movie rating: 4.5 of 5.0 stars
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You are hilarious cousin-bro. You’re right 0 – someone should teach that boy how to run!