Shooting Dogs

(Cert 15)
3 out of 5
Shooting Dogs
Earnest ... Shooting Dogs

It's fascinating to compare Michael Caton-Jones's take on the 1994 Rwandan genocide with last year's Hotel Rwanda.

  1. Shooting Dogs
  2. Production year: 2005
  3. Country: Rest of the world
  4. Cert (UK): 15
  5. Runtime: 115 mins
  6. Directors: Michael Caton-Jones
  7. Cast: Claire Hope Ashitey, Hugh Dancy, John Hurt
  8. More on this film

Both are based on fact, play out at a makeshift Tutsi sanctuary laid siege by Hutu extremists, and both lambast a blusteringly ineffectual UN peacekeeping force.

But where Hotel Rwanda was slick and professional, Shooting Dogs is both more earnest and more awkward.

Crucially, Dogs opts to frame its story from a white perspective, installing John Hurt and Hugh Dancy as fragile good samaritans at a small technical college.

It even throws in a ham-fisted love interest, with Dancy scheming to save the cute Tutsi student who has a crush on him.

Only near the end, when all these plot mechanics fall away, does the film truly come into its own, overtaken by the sheer mounting horror of its surroundings.

The biggest emotional punch is saved for the final credits, which pay moving tribute to the Rwandan survivors who helped make the movie.

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