Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Roméo Dallaire (2004, Peter Raymont)

I am not at all happy with my writeup on Yes below and may be redoing it soon. I did not capture my feelings about the film well at all, partly because I was trying too hard to avoid spoilers.

Another thing I'm not happy with is this documentary about Romeo Dallaire (how's that for a segue, its a good thing I don't do this for a living.) The story is interesting and harrowing, but the film does not tell it well. I was somewhat familiar with the situation from seeing Hotel Rwanda last year, but I can't imagine anyone going into this blind coming out with any really understanding of what led up to the situation there. Thats just pure bad storytelling. The bigger problem is that the film never offered anything surprising or noteworthy about Dallaire. I don't need to watch 8 segments of Dallaire visiting his old haunts feeling bad and saying "our hands were tied." I already know he feels bad, and I already know his hands were tied. Give me something new or surprising or insightful about this man. Dallaire is not a particularly articulate speaker, which doesn't help matters any. This works better as a condemnation of the international community and the UN as they stood by and put Dallaire in the situation he found himself in. Unfortunately this isn't a movie about the international community, its a movie about Dallaire and apart from a few bits and pieces it just doesn't work very well.