ALLAN HUNTER at the Movies

SCOTTISH DIRECTOR Michael Caton-Jones has kept a low profile in recent years. All that is about to change as he releases two new films on the very same day.

One of them is the big budget Sharon Stone vehicle ‘Basic Instinct 2’. The other is ‘Shooting Dogs’, a restrained and moving true story from the Rwandan genocide of 1994.

It’s not too hard to discern which is the film closest to his heart. An honest, understated attempt to tell one story of what happened in 1994, ‘Shooting Dogs’ focuses on the events at a Catholic school in the Rwandan capital of Kigali.

Joe Connor (Hugh Dancy) is a typically naive, well-intentioned young Englishman who is teaching there under the benevolent eye of Father Christopher, played with great compassion and conviction by John Hurt.

When the President’s plane is shot down, it marks the beginning of a concerted campaign of violence by the Hutus against the Tutsi minority. The school becomes a sanctuary, enjoying the protection of a UN peacekeeping force, but it becomes increasingly obvious that the violence has escalated into genocide and that the West will take no action to stop the slaughter.

Joe and Father Christopher are caught between their commitment to the school and the instinct for self-preservation. Unflinching in its depiction of some awful events, ‘Shooting Dogs’ generally avoids melodrama and constantly prompts the viewer to ask themselves what they would have done under the circumstances.

A sentimental postscript seems misjudged, but overall this is an intelligent and touching human drama with an especially fine performance from the eternally reliable Hurt.

Selected nationwide release

Nationwide release
Director: Michael Caton-Jones
Stars: John Hurt, Hugh Dancy, Dominique Horwitz, Louis Mahoney, Nicola Walker
Screenplay: David Wolstencroft, based on a story by Richard Alwyn and David Belton
Certificate: 15
Running time: 115 mins
Country: UK/Germany/France
Year: 2005

© Allan Hunter, 2006