Don Cheadle is exceptionally convincing as protagonist Paul Rusesabagina in Hotel Rwanda, the true story of a hotel manager-turned-war-hero who sheltered more than 1200 refugees from the furore of Rwanda’s ghastly militia crisis in the 1990’s. While the western world occasionally heard reports about “tribal warfare” in Africa, one of the bloodiest chapters in recent world history coated a nation in corpses, accumulating a body count of almost one million people slain in 100 days. What made this barbaric force of genocide – the fastest human culling in modern history -- even more agonizing for its survivors was a shameful lack of international intervention and the UN’s stringent peacekeeping regulations.

“We think you’re dirt,” Colonel Oliver (Nick Nolte) mutters to Rusesabagina as he sips Scotch in the Hotel Mille Collines bar, sombrely contemplating the inadequacy of United Nation’s support. The creases in his brow and the exasperation on his face mark his contempt.  The colonel is silently acknowledging that, as a repercussion of the system’s merciless bureaucracy, many more civilians will perish. He’s not a villain – the colonel is talking about Western and European influence in an ashamed, regretful stance of complacency.  He's a man caught in the middle of a cruel political crossfire, unable to do anything except blankly take orders from the men upstairs.

In this intensely realistic and intermittingly moving account of an against-the-odds struggle for survival director Terry George (In the Name of the Father) re-enacts an inspiring story embedded inside of a crisis too quickly forgotten or underestimated in world history. Much of the power of Hotel Rwanda squeezes out of its tightly drawn focus which, anchored on an intimate personal level, also carries with it a number of succinct political considerations.

Rusesabagina, the smart, logically minded voice of reason and honour, is the film’s level-headed definition of a hero. He grudgingly rises to that status in a similar way to Oscar Schindler’s ascent towards heroism, but without Schindler’s initial ideas for personal gain.

Rusesabagina is a smartly competent manager, persistently faithful to the company policy, and even has the foresight to rub shoulders with high-profile guests in the hope of collecting a favour or two for his family if things turn bad. Shortly after we meet them, things turn bad. After the president is assassinated (April 1994) a bloody war breaks out between the two feuding groups of Rwandan people: the “Hutus” and the “Tutsis.” Rusesabagina and his family seek refuge in the Mille Collines, a four-star hotel, and are soon joined by hundreds of others whom the conflict renders homeless and hunted. Rusesabagina bribes officials with beer and cash, risks life and limb for supplies and does whatever he can in the hope of preventing any more unnecessary blood shed.

We learn mostly about the conflict by its affects on those caught in the crossfire, and the humans huddle together like petrified sheep hiding from the shadows of wolves. Terry George, working with a great script penned by himself and debut writer Keir Pearson (an ex-Olympic rower, incidentally), does a fine job painting humanity onto the faces of his cast without extorting them for brash or over-wrought sentimentality. He solicits emotions from his characters in tremendously effective ways – we really empathize with these people -- and the intensity of their plight is immensely heightened by a painful ring of truth that shatters any notions of disbelief. The title and pitch of Hotel Rwanda brings to mind visions of a melodramatic weepie, but the film is bold, realistic and carefully judged, marrying its head and its heart in captivating unison.

A considerable portion of the credit belongs to Cheadle, who takes a good character and makes him a great one, aptly displaying the warmth and logic of an ordinary good man grappling under extraordinary pressure. Rusesabagina works all the angles: bargaining with militia thugs, reasoning with and stalling corrupt police, conversing with the UN Colonel, reassuring and calming his family. All the while, dealing with a massive crowd of troubled souls who look up him like the Hebrews to Moses, being led not to the promised land but to the slightest glimmer of hope for survival. Occasionally we see through Rusesabagina’s eyes glimpses of the horrific magnitude of the conflict, such as one distressing sequence in which human bodies litter a road like discarded scraps of rubbish.

Mostly however Hotel Rwanda is a work of understatement, a discipline best eclipsed in its closing images which, furnished with a gentle sense of optimism, are bereft of any sense of embellishment or overkill.

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