Stevecorp Don't listen to the negative reviews

CommentsXp Best movie ever!

AutCuddly Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

Donald Seymour This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Syl This haunting movie is about the Rwandan genocide in 1994. The film takes place at a UN school with Sir John Hurt as Father Christopher and Hugh Dancy, a British teacher. In only a few days, 2,500 refugees stayed at the school rather than be slaughtered by machete outside the gates. The film shows the horrors of dead bodies laying on the streets. Hurt is brilliant in his role. When he explains that he has found his soul here, it was heartbreaking. You knew Christopher would stay behind. When the father pleaded to be killed by guns than machetes, it was harrowing. The story of the genocide in Rwanda should be told here. The film doesn't shy away from accurately reporting the events. The film was done on location in Rwanda.

Robert J. Maxwell More than 800,000 Rwandans were systematically killed over the summer of 1994, most of them Tutsi and pro-peace Hutu. This film is about the experiences of a young man, Hugh Dancy, serving as an intern at a technical school in Rwanda. The school, encapsulated in fences, is run by a Catholic priest, John Hurt, and serves as a temporary base for a UN military contingent, led by the rigid Belgian colonel Dominique Horwitz.What we witness is the increasing pressure of rag tag "militias" outside the fence on the mostly Tutsi students and staff at the school. The assassination of the Hutu president is blamed by the radio and newspapers on militant Tutsi. Even a sensible young Hutu, an aide to Hurt, comes to believe the prevalent interpretation of events. Hate fills the air. Americans should be familiar with this sort of thing by now.The Tutsi refugees flood the school grounds, justifiably terrified. The militia outside are cheerfully hacking people to death with machetes, including women holding babies. Ten Belgian UN soldiers are murdered. No one is safe. The tension grows so great that the Catholic priest twice uses a word we don't often associate with Catholic priests. In my opinion, it's a better movie that the similar and highly lauded "Hotel Rwanda." I'll just add a couple of observations.The usual format for a story like this is that it's told through the eyes of heroic whites who come to the aid of Africans or African-Americans. You'll find that template here. I didn't find it condescending or offensive. The African performers have plenty of screen time in important parts, the whites don't succeed in saving the blacks, and this is a movie about a small part of the tribal warfare, a kind of microcosm of the whole. It could have been about the political situation instead of the effects of the killing on a single community, but that would have been a different and far more complicated film.There are dead bodies in abundance and pools of blood but they aren't trivialized by being made more shocking than they need to be. Nobody's head rolls across the floor. The violence is almost all in medium shot and partially hidden by objects or shrubbery.We see the militias angrily attacking their victims and at the same time cheering and, inevitably, some of the street riots in American cities come to mind. But any such comparison is unjust. The violence in Rwanda was wholesale and deadly, leading to the deaths of about 20% of the population. Besides, there is little reason to feel superior on racial grounds. A good deal of footage exists of white people dutifully wiping out other white people on ethnic grounds.The role of the media isn't really made clear enough in the film. The role of the media is often underplayed in the interpretation of historical events. As Will Rogers said, "All I know is what I read in the newspaper." But, again, the focus of the film is not on explanations but on consequences. The consequences are so clearly tragic that we really don't need the lugubrious sound track to cue us about our emotions.The international community was caught unprepared and uncertain whether to interfere and, if to interfere, how to do it? If we don't intervene, what do we wind up with -- white guilt? The United States was particularly recalcitrant. The memory of our humanitarian efforts in Somalia was all too vivid. The use of the word "genocide" was prohibited by spokesmen in Washington, long after it became clear that that was precisely what was taking place. See, if you acknowledge that what's going on is actually "genocide", how can you possibly justify inaction? It's a tragic story and a saddening one, but not a cheap one. It doesn't cast the Hutu as benighted savages and the Tutsi as heroic self-sacrificing heroes.In a way, that's the central problem with the events we're shown. There were so few heroes.

Roland E. Zwick "Beyond the Gates" (aka "Shooting Dogs") is a shattering true-life drama set during the Rwandan genocide of 1994 - a holocaust in which over 800,000 unarmed Tutsis were brutally massacred by their gun- and machete-toting Hutu neighbors simply for being "different." This harrowing and heartbreaking film focuses on a Catholic priest and a young American teacher who find themselves caught up in a human tragedy of unimaginable proportions when a large group of terrified Tutsis flee to the school for safety and protection (a comforting but, as it turns out, utterly impotent U.N. "peacekeeping force" has also set up shop there).Comparisons to the earlier, better-known "Hotel Rwanda" are as an inevitable as they are irrelevant, for "Beyond the Gates" is a searing and unforgettable movie in its own right, filled with indelible imagery and pulse-pounding suspense. The brilliant screenplay by David Wolstencroft (based on the book by Richard Alwyn and David Belton) focuses as much on the moral dilemma taking place within the souls of the two white men as it does on the unspeakable tragedy occurring in the world outside. Both men, utterly powerless in the face of such a monumental event, are forced to question whether the religious dogma that they espouse so readily in times of peace has any real efficacy or relevance in times when the very fabric of humanity seems to be coming apart at the seams. Director Michael Caton-Jones has provided scene after scene in which characters - both major and minor - are forced to re-examine their commitment to themselves, the people around them and the belief systems they've adopted to get themselves through life. The movie also points out just how shamefully the outside world acted in turning a blind eye to what was happening in that country, refusing to step in at any point to try and bring the situation under control, and then proffering lame excuses to justify its inaction once it was all over.With many actual survivors of the holocaust working both behind the camera as technical assistants and in front of it as extras and minor characters, the film brilliantly recreates the events with devastating immediacy and accuracy (the movie was also filmed at the actual locations where the incidents themselves took place, greatly enhancing its verisimilitude). Moreover, John Hurt as the priest and Hugh Dancy as the teacher deliver soul-searing, gut-wrenching performances that get to the heart of what it truly means to be one's brother's keeper.Acts of such unmitigated savagery and brutality, especially when conducted on this massive a scale, are so incomprehensible in their horror that it would be virtually impossible for any single work of art to successfully grasp them. But by personalizing the issues and placing the events within the context of a series of universally identifiable moral dilemmas, the makers of this extraordinarily fine film have perhaps come as close as is humanly possible to achieving that end. Don't miss it.

robdude The film brings home the self created impotence of the international community. Dogs are shot by soldiers to prevent them eating the bodies of people they have to stand by and watch being slaughtered. The true facts (although the characters are fictional) of the situation are as awful as they are bizarre. Portraying this on screen along with the humanity in the face of death was done superbly and in a very direct human way.The illustration of how situations such as this gather and how people, once considered friends, can be so corrupted is achieved with a deft hand.