Shooting Dogs film review

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SHOOTING DOGS

Scottish director Michael Caton-Jones has two films released on the same day in 2006: Basic Instinct 2 and Shooting Dogs. It would be hard to think of two more different subject matters, but the versatility Caton-Jones has shown in directing both is already made apparent from his CV which includes films as diverse as Rob Roy and The Jackal.

Inevitable comparisons will be made between Shooting Dogs and Hotel Rwanda, last year's Rwanda film which covers very similar ground: namely the atrocities that occurred there in 1994 and how a diehard group of Samaritans attempted to save some of the population from certain death. Hotel Rwanda was an impressive work, and Shooting Dogs is at least its equal, if not better. It will probably remain in the shadow of the American film simply because of the fact that it has been released later, but on its own terms Shooting Dogs is arguably a more powerful affair.

John Hurt plays Christopher, a Catholic priest in charge of a school in central Rwanda. Hugh Dancy is Joe, a young idealistic teaching assistant at the school, popular with his colleagues and pupils. When the president of the country is killed, civil war breaks out between the Hutu and Tutsi tribes, with the Hutus slaughtering their enemies in vast numbers: deaths largely inflicted by machete.

Christopher opens the school gates to Tutsi refugees and soon there are thousands in the compound, with a baying pack of armed Hutu militia waiting for them to step outside. The school's only protection comes from a beleaguered UN force, unable to take action themselves and forced to follow orders which mean they can only protect the European refugees. When the soldiers are told to pull out of the school, there seems very little option for those inside.

What's particularly impressive about Shooting Dogs is the manner in which each character's moral dilemma is put across: from Hurt's overly devout priest who begins to question his faith, to Dancy's naïve youth desperate to save the friends he has made from inevitable death. Similarly, a weary war reporter faces a new challenge, and the UN commander is stuck following distant orders which make little sense.