Despite the galvanizing events taking place onscreen (highlighted by staggering shots of corpse-littered roads and other aftermaths of mass executions), what really sells the premise is Cheadle’s performance.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Mar 17, 2025

Don Cheadle absolutely, 100% deserves the Oscar for Best Actor.

| Original Score: 4.0/4.0 | Sep 11, 2020

Remarkably, the director Terry George and his co-writer Keir Pearson have pulled it off, rooting the big picture of anonymous murder in one small precise close-up.

| Feb 3, 2018

Like "Schindler's List," "Hotel Rwanda" shows how the madness of genocide and war converted one man's context of wealth and success from capitalism to humanitarianism. Don Cheadle honors Paul Rusesabagina by tapping his brave face and internal rage.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Sep 24, 2010

potentially fantastic material...unfortunately, [Terry] George's attempt is too mired in movie-of-the-week sensibilities...to do any justice to its subject matter

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Aug 17, 2010

Cheadle, in his richest role since Devil in a Blue Dress, burrows deep inside this complex man, who discovers in himself a strength he never knew he possessed as he faces the disillusion of all the "civilized" notions he believes in.

| Jul 6, 2010

Don Cheadle gives a beautifully restrained tour de force performance as a singular voice of reason at the epicenter of writer/director Terry George's depiction of Rwanda's outbreak of genocide in 1994 when Hutu militias slaughtered one million Tutsis with

| Original Score: A- | Apr 16, 2009

This is a solid film, but it is the truth that holds the power, not the direction.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 7, 2007

The film belongs to Don Cheadle as Paul and, not surprisingly, he walks away with it.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 14, 2007

The filmmakers want to respect history and not exploit it as so much slasher movie fodder.

| Original Score: 75/100 | May 5, 2007

Cheadle is outstanding in his first major lead role, one where he is present during practically every important moment in this story.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Nov 1, 2006

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.

| Jun 24, 2006

Who cares about overdone orchestral blasts or signpost-waving lines of dialogue when such raw, naked, painful humanity is displayed by Don Cheadle in the central role?

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 1, 2006

Cheadle has an Oscar nomination for best actor. But this isn't a grandstanding portrayal: it is a performance at the service of the work.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 17, 2006

Showing traces of the well-meaning paternalism that dogs many Western films about Africa, Hotel Rwanda doesn't go far enough in indicting Europeans and Americans for protecting their own while failing to intervene in time to stop the mass killings.

Full Review | Sep 26, 2005

Cheadle has been doing great, often hilariously comic, work in supporting roles for years; Hotel Rwanda is his first lead role, but it likely won't be his last.

| Sep 16, 2005

...disappointingly conventional [but] an important film nevertheless...

| Original Score: 5/10 | Sep 8, 2005

The film is an overwhelming, sad, and heartfelt achievement.

| Original Score: A | Jun 16, 2005

The fact-based story it tells of instinctual heroism in the face of unspeakable horror is powerful enough to overcome its flaws.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 7, 2005

Incapable of honestly confronting its ugly subject matter.

| Original Score: C | May 4, 2005