Shake Hands with the Devil (2007)
★★★ — Shake Hands with the Devil (2007)
Roméo Dallaire's 2003 memoir of the same name, in which he documented his experiences commanding the UN peacekeeping mission during the 1994 Rwandan genocide, had already been adapted once as a 2004 documentary before this dramatised Canadian co-production arrived in 2007. Roger Spottiswoode, a director perhaps best known for the Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), took the project on as a more personal, smaller-scale piece of work, shot partly on location in Rwanda itself. Roy Dupuis, one of the most recognisable faces in Canadian television, took on the central role of Dallaire. The film sits within a cluster of mid-2000s productions, including Hotel Rwanda (2004), that attempted to reckon with the international community's failure during the genocide, arriving at a moment of renewed public and political reflection on Western inaction.
A-Z World Movie Tour Rwanda Shake Hands with the Devil (2007) is a tough, sobering watch, exactly as it should be. Based on the memoirs of Roméo Dallaire, the Canadian UN peacekeeper who witnessed the Rwandan genocide firsthand, the film puts you right into the horror of 1994 through the eyes of a man who was ordered to stand by and observe, but not intervene. That sense of helplessness, of screaming into a void while the world looks away, is absolutely heartbreaking. The film doesn’t go for cheap emotion, it’s quiet, restrained, and all the more powerful for it. Great cinematography captures the tension and dread, and the soundtrack, subtle but haunting with some amazing African singing, adds to the weight of every scene. Roy Dupuis delivers a committed, deeply felt performance as Dallaire. Exhausted, haunted, morally shattered. You can see the guilt eating at him in every frame. It’s not flashy, but it’s raw and real. The film sticks closely to the truth, reportedly checked line by line by Dallaire himself, which gives it a strong sense of authenticity. That respect for the real events is admirable and necessary. But for all its strengths, the pacing is slow, almost to a fault. At nearly two hours, it feels like it’s circling the same emotional and narrative ground without much variation. The tension never really breaks, but it doesn’t build much either. It’s methodical to a fault, and while that reflects the real-life paralysis of the UN mission, it also makes for a film that’s more important than gripping. It’s not meant to be entertaining, and it shouldn’t be, but sometimes, when reality is this grim and the structure so rigid, it can feel more like duty than drama.
Rating: ★★★ | Year: 2007 | Watched: 2025-08-28
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