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Shake Hands With the Devil: The Journey of Romeo Dallaire (2005)
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Reviews Counted:16
Fresh:15
Rotten:1
Average Rating:7.7/10
Consensus: A gut-wrenching documentary about the man in charge of the UN peace keeping force during the 1994 Rwanda genocide of 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutus.
Theatrical Release:May 18, 2005 Limited
Synopsis: In 100 days - between April 6 and July 16, 1994 - an estimated 800,000 men, women and children were brutally killed in the obscure African country of Rwanda. The victims - many horrifically hacked... In 100 days - between April 6 and July 16, 1994 - an estimated 800,000 men, women and children were brutally killed in the obscure African country of Rwanda. The victims - many horrifically hacked to death with machetes - were Tutsi, and moderate Hutus who supported them. One man was tasked by the United Nations with ensuring that peace was maintained in Rwanda - Canadian Lieutenant General Roméo Dallaire. But unsupported by U.N. headquarters and its Security Council far away in New York, Dallaire and his handful of soldiers were incapable of stopping the genocide. After ten years of mental torture, reliving the horrors daily and more than once attempting suicide, Roméo Dallaire has poured out his soul in an extraordinary book. Shake Hands With The Devil is a cri de coeur. The General pulls no punches in his condemnation of top UN officials, expedient Belgian policy makers and senior members of the Clinton administration who chose to do nothing as Dallaire pleaded for reinforcements and revised rules of engagement. Dallaire is convinced that, with a few thousand more troops and a mandate to act pre-emptively, he could have stopped the killings. His impotence, at a time of extreme crisis, preys on his conscience still. The experienced Canadian documentary production company, White Pine Pictures, secured the documentary rights to General Dallaire’s book and exclusive access to follow him during his first return trip to Rwanda, in April 2004 - the 10th anniversary of the genocide. We were there as he revisited the killing fields that haunt him. Shake Hands With The Devil is the most powerful documentary produced about the Rwandan genocide. Unflinching. Gut-wrenching. Challenging. Hard-hitting. This is appointment television for viewers throughout the world who care about human rights and international justice. -- © White Pine Pictures [More]
Starring: Romeo Dallaire
Starring: Romeo Dallaire
Director: Peter Raymont
Director: Peter Raymont
Producer: Peter Raymont, Lindalee Tracy
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Reviews for Shake Hands With the Devil: The Journey of Romeo...
A personalized, historically charged travelogue that speaks to a massive tragedy's impact on one man.
In a way, Shake Hands With the Devil puts the best of Western conscience on display -- and it's not a pretty sight.
We never get a satisfying re-creation of the events for which Dallaire now suffers.
Poses an essential question: How can you shame an international community that, even now, seems constitutionally incapable of it?
Raymont's film, with Dallaire as the main voice and news footage from 1994, lays out a compelling, compact story.
The filmmakers follow this compassionate and articulate man as returns to Rwanda a decade later to revisit his demons.
A fascinating account of its subject's self-torture over his inability to stop one of the 20th century's greatest tragedies.
Dallaire is not only the protagonist of Shake Hands, he is a compelling reason to see it.
His story is worth telling, and worth remembering for what it tells us about the West's brutal disinterest in Africa, and the United Nations' inability to do even its most basic job of keeping the peace.
Dellaire's final bit of self-abuse is to blame himself for his failure to shame the world to action.
Peter Raymont's film is a respectful portrait of Roméo Dallaire, the Canadian commander of the United Nations peacekeeping force in Rwanda in 1994.
Romeo Dallaire seems to be the only human in the world with a conscience. That it's eating him alive makes Shake Hands required viewing, perhaps even at the UN.
Shake Hands is less about one man than about a U.N. structurally incapable of carrying out its peacekeeping mandate, then and now.
It gives us a man who could have stopped the carnage -- 800,000 murdered in 100 days -- but whose hands were bound at the highest level. He knows this, it haunts him, and if it doesn't shame you, it should.
Like Dallaire's bestselling autobiography, which provides the movie's basis, the film is part therapeutic personal exorcism and part passionate humanitarian indictment.
A far more resonant film than that offered by concurrent narrative feature Hotel Rwanada.
| Tomatometer Percentage | Movie | Date |
|---|---|---|
| 90% 90% | The White Ribbon | 12/30 |
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| | Leap Year | 1/8 |
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| | The Book of Eli | 1/15 |
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