Shooting Dogs Review

"SHOOTING DOGS" reviews

Movie

SHOOTING DOGS

Author

anonymous

Date reviewed

2006-03-27 15:30:36

Provider

Review

When war broke out in Rwanda the UN peacekeepers were given strict orders not to shoot anything more human than a dog. So as the massacres began, resulting in the deaths of perhaps one million Tutsis in the space of a few months, the men and women delegated by the international community to protect them could do nothing, and so fled for their own safety. Shooting Dogs takes its name from this tragedy and follows on from the Oscar-nominated Hotel Rwanda in making a film about a subject that most people would rather forget.

In that it should be applauded, but the British film-maker Michael Caton-Jones (who has also been hard at work on the slightly less serious Basic Instinct 2) doesn't really dramatise events like he should. The story is set in the École Technique Officielle, a real institution in which both Tutsis and moderate Hutus took refuge. When the UN withdrew the Tutsis were effectively condemned to death, with only Joe Connor (Hugh Dancy), a young British schoolteacher spending a year in Africa, and the avuncular Father Christopher (John Hurt) remaining. What follows is a familiar tale of courage, strength and spirituality in the face of appalling brutality. But with very few Africans fleshed out beyond the minimum, we're left with the strong impression that this is the sort of thing that happens to other people. Which may, in the recent history of our country, be true but doesn't make for particularly riveting film-making.

Shooting Dogs Review