Lovesusti The Worst Film Ever

Micitype Pretty Good

Acensbart Excellent but underrated film

Senteur As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

Angeneer Sometimes in April is not boring, however it's way far from being introspective and realistic.Pedantry oozes from every inch of the celluloid. The director hasn't given enough effort to explain the "why". It's only about the "what" and a reduced, possibly one-sided version of the "what" it is.The film is heavily oriented towards western audiences (it pushes the right "western" buttons). Some things that resonate with the western mentality simply do not register with Rwandan audiences. Some other things that touch on local psyche and actually explain the flow of events in Rwanda are not even explored here.So can the viewer learn anything about the conflict from this movie? I'm not sure at all. The only safe outcome is that war is bad, but you knew that already.

coolgroove I've seen both Hotel Rwanda, Tears of the Sun and Schindler's List. If you liked any of those movies, this is a must see. All the civil wars and violence around the globe cry out for this movie to be mandatory viewing for every human being in the world community. With all our advances in technology, information and science, we've learned nothing. We still resort to violence as a means of solving our problems, when in the end we use negotiation and understanding to extricate ourselves from war. Inhumanity, racial and ethnic hatred, bigotry and ethnic cleansing (genocide) are always lurking just beneath the surface. Shame on the WORLD for letting such atrocities as the Rwandan genocide and all others like it occur! (That includes the Jewish holocaust of WWII.) Mass murder of innocent and defenseless civilians doesn't happen in obscurity. It occurs right under our noses, precisely BECAUSE we say and do nothing! Yet, we're willing to die by the thousands to preserve our access to oil. Shame on the world!

Weredegu Since the comparison comes naturally, here it is for you: this film is just as good as 'Hotel Rwanda'. In fact, if you're looking to understand the background of the conflict, it may be even better, for it gives you the macro view of what happened. Fortunately that doesn't mean artistic ambitions were seconded to giving a strategic briefing to audiences. The plot consists of several but nonetheless personal stories that are interwoven in the course of the ordeal these people are going through. So there's just as much human drama and individual perspective as in 'Hotel Rwanda', but the characters are not locked up in the Hotel des Mille Collines all the time. Their fate is to move around more and so you will also see more of what was going on. Naturally, this also means that you'll see more violence, which I guess is what led some people to say that 'Hotel Rwanda' is a lighter account of events, which I actually don't agree with.Given the brutality that had to be portrayed to make the plot credible, shooting this film had to have been a great psychological challenge for some of those participating in the venture. Director Raoul Peck does mention in one of the DVD extras that they did employ a team of psychologists. Even non-local actors who went to Rwanda had to have felt a bit of desperation. For instance Oris Erhuero, the actor of Nigerian origin playing Honoré in the movie, also in the DVD extra, remembers the Biafra War in Nigeria which also claimed a huge number of lives as a result of moves by the belligerents. But you don't have to have African memories from your family to feel shocked, shooting the film might have been just as difficult to, say, an American actor or actress involved in it, I guess. Nor is it, what you can see in this film, an African phenomenon. It was great to hear Bill Clinton speaking of this in archive footage included in the film. He was so damn right - and we didn't even have the final tally from the Balkan wars yet at the time, some of the worst of which was still to come at that point.

Corbett Great drama, which takes on a national disaster elegantly and simply, through the eyes of one man and his family..... Beautifully shot, great lighting and rich colors... Flawed because characters seem to pop in to the plot mid-stream, with little explanation, and the "jump back and forth and back and forth and back and forth" in time technique can really ruin the continuity of a film ( a la Oliver Stone's disaster: "Alexander"). Compared to "Hotel Rwanda", the course of events seems a little confusing.Also, contains some rather inane commentary, early on, to the effect that there was never any tribal rivalry, strife or division in that part of Africa until the Belgians came along, 20th century....