Here is the sure-fire formula for taking a very important film (Hotel Rwanda) and ruining it. First let Terry George direct it – his directing credentials include an episode of television’s “The District.” – his writing credentials although more numerous are even more dubious, including the unimpressive Hart’s War and that episode of “The District.” Before I even did any research to see what numbskull put this film together, I was struck by how horrible the sound was – not that it sounded bad, it was that the sound seemed like something out of a 70’s cop show. When some machettes fell out of a crate the music trumpted bomp-bomp-BA! and I expected Jim Rockford or Starsky and Hutch to come around the corner.

He took an important and tragic event and boiled it down to a simple anti-white, anti-Western fable. As a piece of film art, this sucks to high heaven. As a technically sound contruction, this sucks to high heaven. As a choice of subject matter, it is great… the problem is that it is turned into a poorly constructed piece of feel-guilty-bleeding-hard-liberal propaganda and misses the real story of what happened in Rwanda.

A great cast flocked to participate and likely did so because of the extreme left-wing message – Don Cheadle, Nick Nolte, Joaqin Phoenix, Jean Reno. Either none of them can read, didn’t read it, or just figured the “message” was more important than a good film. In the end though, making a bad film is NOT the way to advance a political message.

It is a shame because I have really been looking forward to seeing it. I was expecting a gritty, truthful portrayal of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide – what I got was a left-wing indictment of the US’s response. It is one of the worst films of the year and further evidence that the Academy Awards are total crap. (I unlike the Academy and some people I know, do not give a bias in my ratings just because its political view agrees or disagrees with mine – a crap movie is a crap movie despite its politics.)

RATING 4 out of 10