In 1994, Hutus in Rwanda murdered almost a million Tutsis, and the United Nations, United States, and all other Western nations failed to fire a shot to stop it. A UN officer, played in the film by Nick Nolte, attempting to explain why the Tutsis were going to be left to be murdered, summed up the reasons nicely: "You're dirt. We think you're dirt, Paul. The West, all the superpowers, they think you're dirt. They think you're dung. You're not even a nigger. You're African." I think that's the lesson that recent history has taught us: if you're not white, and if you don't have natural resources that Western nations want to exploit, don't expect any help.

Even in the midst of such horrors, there was still a story that could provide a happy ending. Don Cheadle plays Paul Rusesabagina, the Hutu manager of the Hotel Milles Collins. Using the skills he learned while dealing with corrupt government officials, he managed to save over a thousand Tutsi and Hutu refugees from the machetes of the Hutu militia. Cheadle deserves an Oscar nomination, possibly an Oscar, for his portrayal of a resourceful man who is forced by the events of history to become a hero. He is equaled by Sophie Okonedo, who plays his Tutsi wife Tatiana, his pillar of strength.

He becomes a hero by basically being really good at his job. His job normally entails bribery, flattery, and outright lying to grease the system's wheels; when he suddenly finds himself the sole protector of 1200 "cockroaches," as the Hutus involved in the massacre call the Tutsis, he simply goes about his work. We see him using his influence on General Bizimungo (Fana Mokoena) to get a reluctant employee to do his job; he calls in to the hotel president (an uncredited Jean Reno) and suavely persuades him to call in some diplomatic favors in an attempt to force the West to protect them. He deals with monsters like they are old friends; he glad-hands the way to safety, never breaking a sweat in public, even though he's so terrified that he can barely tie his tie. It's a star-making performance from a guy who should already be a star.

Unlike many Western films about Africans or African-Americans (such as Glory), there's no white guy serving as a buffer between the audience and the events onscreen. Even so, there are three white characters who serve important, if symbolic, roles. Nick Nolte is great as Colonel Oliver, the head of the UN forces who have been instructed to do nothing to stop the carnage. His voice is broken, his back bowed, under the strain of being the public face of polite monstrosity. Cara Seymour plays a Red Cross worker who does what she can to help, but the refusal of Western governments to intervene make her basically useless. And Joaquin Phoenix plays a reporter whose idealism suffers a crushing blow when he is informed that the Western media doesn't want to hear about what's going on in Rwanda. He tells Paul a story about how Americans deal with news like this: "If people see this footage, they'll go, 'Oh my God! That's horrible!" then go on eating their dinner."

I'm not much different. I vaguely remember hearing about the genocide, or at least the Clinton administration's parsing of words about the difference between "genocide" and "acts of genocide." But the full weight of the events didn't hit home until I read an Elmore Leonard novel, Pagan Babies. Like a lot of great art, this film made me feel ashamed of myself and of my country. It rubs your nose in what happened, but it doesn't come across as overly polemical. Like a lot of great art, it relies mostly on showing instead of telling, on actions instead of sanctimonious speeches. The defeat in Paul Rusesabagina's eyes when he's told that the UN forces have arrived only to escort white people out instead of Rwandans says volumes, more than a little speech by Cheadle could have.

The film has been criticized for being an African Schindler's List (not that I see a problem in that). Some want to know why the movies insist on stories of saviors and heroes instead of on the "true" story of such horrific events, the truth being that there really are no happy endings. This argument ignores the fact that there was indeed a small, token happy ending, for a few people in the middle of the chaos. This does not reduce the suffering or the horror: if anything, by showing the impossible odds that the characters in this film survived, it drives home both the point that these people lived through a literal hell on earth and the nature of that hell. Plus, since this is cinema, which is still about telling stories, there has to be a focus, someone for the audience to pay attention to. But it's no whitewash of the genocide. Take, for example, the "triumphant" scene at the end when Paul and Sophie find their nieces and nephews among the throngs of orphans: the camera dwells on their joy, yes, but it does not shrink from the multitude of unhappy endings in the faces of those children who don't have someone to rescue them. Every movie about the Holocaust or other "acts of genocide" cannot be simply about death. Making a movie about survivors does not make meaningless the deaths of those who were murdered; it doesn't attempt to "explain" the horrors away. Paul Rusesabagina's story is an eyewitness account of events that didn't leave very many witnesses.