Hotel Rwanda

Hotel Rwanda is the story of Paul Rusesabagina's heroic effort to save more than 1200 refugees in the hotel he managed as Rwanda imploded in genocidal violence in 1994. Don Cheadle does a brilliant job portraying Rusesabagina, a Hutu, as he walks a thin line as he has to deal with the Rwandan army and the Hutu extremist militia Interahamwe while trying to protect the mostly Tutsi refugees (including his own wife, played by Sophie Okonedo) whose lives aren't worth a plug nickel to the Hutu militia and his hotel's, the Mille Colline, dignity.
The horror of the 3 month-long orgy of genocidal violence that left nearly a million Tutsis and moderate Hutus dead is brought home in several of the movie's sequences, particularly Rusesabagina's decision to tell his wife to jump with the kids off the hotel roof rather than suffer the machetes of the militia and the disturbing drive down the river road. The movie also highlights the nearly total inaction of the UN and western democracies as, at first, Rusesabagina optimistically hopes for rescue only to have his hopes dashed.
Hotel Rwanda has been compared to Schindler's List in its moral power as well as in the development of the principal character. While Rusesabagina always intended to save someone, his family, while Oskar Schindler mainly wanted to make a buck, both were prompted by the increasing madness around them to save as many people as they could because it was morally right to do so, even at their own risk (particularly acute in Rusesabagina's case since the Hutu militia was specifically targetting moderate Hutus as well as Tutsis). Hotel Rwanda doesn't take as close a look at the evils of the men carrying out the genocide as Schindler's List does, but then Hotel Rwanda is also 70 minutes shorter and so doesn't have the time to spend on it.

Overall, it's a powerful, disturbing, and emotional movie with excellent acting by Cheadle and Okonedo. I give the movie an A.