Invictus- South Africa!!!!

I may have titled my whole blog Hotel Rwanda Movie Review... I didn't mean to do that... sorry but this is another movie review except this time it is on the movie Invictus!!!!!

Katrina Price
Mod 2
June 4, 2010
Overall Invictus was a great movie on South Africa. South Africa has been through a lot; especially in the last twenty years. In those last twenty years Nelson Mandela has come out of prison and into office as South Africa’s president. They also went from apartheid to a democracy. That was no simple task but Mandela took very good control of it and it went smoothly.
Matt Damon did a great job as Francois Pienaar. He was very convincing as well as being a great leader for the rugby team. The Springboks were also very good actors because they probably acted very similar when it came to teaching the black Africans to play rugby. All of the actors did nice job of portraying what the real people acted like.
On the surface Invictus seems like it is all about rugby; but it’s not. Nelson Mandela uses rugby as his bridge for politics. Being in prison for a long time with white guards he has learned what the Afrikaners love to do; and they love rugby. So he realizes that is the way to bridge the blacks and whites to unite as one. This is a very good way to bring people together. Many people doubted him, but it worked very well.
Overall Invictus was a great movie. It would have been nice if it would have gone a little more in depth. They didn’t really explain much about what happened before Mandela took office. Characters said some of the things that went on but it was easy to miss. Also it would have been nice if it went more in depth after the Afrikaners and black South Africans united. All you saw was that they were now finally friends with each other. But it’s like what are they doing now; 15 years later? For covering the basics it was a good movie.

Hotel Rwanda

Katrina Price
Mod 2
Hotel Rwanda
Hotel Rwanda was a very well put together movie. It did a very good job of showing what happened in Rwanda during 1994. It is a very hard time in history to relive and the director did a good job reliving it. This movie was very accurate; which on a topic like this is a good thing. It was a very hard movie to watch when you realized this really happened and it’s not all made up. As a world we need to remember that this really did happen sixteen years ago.
Don Cheadle did a great job as Paul Rusesabagina. Paul’s role would be very hard to play because Paul was a very brave man in real life. Don gave great emotion to the role. Also Sophie Okonedo did great as Tatiana Rusesabagina because in real life she would have been scared to death. Sophie’s emotion also showed through. They also picked a great setting to film this movie. They filmed most of it in South Africa. South Africa was a good location because it has mountains they could use to have the hotel on and have it overlooking the town. There were many scenes when Paul was on the roof watching what was happening below. Also some parts of South Africa are like some parts of Rwanda.
There were bad parts of Hotel Rwanda. The reason they were bad parts were because they were hard to watch; not because it was a bad movie. It was just a hard topic to discuss. One scene that stuck out the most was when Paul was driving over the dead bodies. It was hard to realize that things like that really happened. Also when two caravans from the UN were taking refugees and got stopped by the Hutu’s and then were not able to escape.
Learning about what happened in Rwanda is very important. Hotel Rwanda does a very good job of showing what happened. This movie is not biases because this even is a fact; it’s not made up. When we become more aware of what happened then it may help stop things like this in the future.