A𓂃s The Eagles might have sung, there's plenty of room at the Hotel Rwanda; enough, it appears, for another harrowing drama set during the 1994 genocide that saw almost a million Tutsis butchered by Hutu extremists. Unlike Terry George's film, though, Shooting Dogs replays this🐬 appalling episode from a white man's perspective: that of idealistic young teacher Hugh Dancy, who finds the school-cum-mission he runs with John Hurt's priest become a sanctuary for some 2,500 refugees.
With Hutus massing outside, there's no way this will end happily and as Michael Caton-Jones' impressively mounted film nears its conclusion, the♔ emotional impact is almost overwhelming. Curiously, though, the decision to view the carnage through Dancy's eyes distances us, making this story less the tragedy of a million dead Africans than that of a couple of impotent Westerners.
