大象传媒

A powerful, based-on-fact film, Shooting Dogs follows John Hurt's priest and Hugh Dancy's idealistic young teacher as they watch bureaucracy, institutional racism and generations of hate lead to mass murder in Rwanda. It's April, 1994 and after the apparent assassination of the president, the country is in uproar: the majority Hutus are blaming the Tutsis - and killing them. By the bus load. Refugees seek shelter at the United Nations-guarded school of Father Christopher (Hurt), but no one's sure how long the UN troops will stay...

As with Schindler's List, you're not exactly hard-pressed to guess the direction Shooting Dogs is taking. There are few surprises here. But that doesn't make it any less affecting. If Rwanda is a scar on the conscience of the United Nations, this film picks at its stitches. A passion project for those involved, it is angry and earnest and highlights an episode the international community have never quite dealt with: how it sat back and watched as thousands of Africans were killed.

"IT IS HURT WHO EXCELS"

There's a particularly effective scene where Dancy sits with a TV reporter (Nicola Walker), as she admits the reason she is less affected by the brutality she sees in Rwanda than in Bosnia: "Over here, they're just dead Africans." It's a potent point, too often unspoken when considering Western attitudes to the 'Dark Continent'. Of the performers, Dancy looks effectively shell-shocked but it is Hurt who excels. The veteran actor makes his man of the cloth both admirable and ambiguous - the heart and soul of an unusually thoughtful film.