Shake Hands with the Devil - what the critics say

Shot in English, with a high-profile launch at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival and a subject who's more a hero of Canada than merely Quebec, Shake Hands with the Devil has received more coverage from English-language reviewers than any other film where Roy has a central role.  Extracts below are selected from media around Canada (and beyond) in September 2007.  Most reviewers felt moved to reflect upon the realities of the events of 1994, and some on their parallels in present-day Darfur.  With the issue of the DVD only 4 months later in January 2008, this theme continues.  Read Eric the Intern's review in full.
 
About the Film About the performance
Brian Webster - www.apolloguide.com
Beautifully filmed, brutally frank, and forceful in its political message – in support of the sort of active peacekeeping that passed into history in the post-September 11 era – Shake hands With the Devil is a powerful film that’s not to be missed.
Roy Dupuis’ understated performance as Dallaire is right on the mark, resisting the temptation to make melodrama of this intense story, and instead portraying Dallaire for what he was – a person fighting hard to do the right thing who is absolutely devastated by his failure to protect the innocent and stop this genocide, which reportedly took the lives of about a million people.
Craig McPherson -www.screenjabber.com
Though flawed, Shake Hands With The Devil is still a powerful and must see film. As Dallaire himself says to his men: “We will stay to bear witness to that which the world does not want to see.” If nothing else, that alone is reason enough to make time for this film.
On the plus side, Dupuis’s portrayal of Dallaire is among the most eerily accurate renditions by an actor in quite some time. Not only do the two share a striking resemblance, but Dupuis seems to almost become the general in every aspect of his being. As a Canadian familiar with the sight of Dallaire in news reports and interviews, Dupuis’s performance is nothing short of impressive.
Mark Harris  www.straight.com  (Vancouver)
He is aided in his efforts by cosmopolitan director Roger Spottiswoode (with probably his finest work to date) and screenwriter Michael Donovan (who previously won an Oscar for producing Bowling for Columbine).
Roy Dupuis who was once known mainly for his heartthrob roles but who now seems to specialize in playing key Québécois heroes (i.e. The Rocket) bears a strikingly strong physical resemblance to Dallaire, and this likeness adds verisimilitude to an already powerful performance.
Chris Knight - National Post (Toronto)
From the Oscar-nominated 2004 film Hotel Rwanda to the romance Un dimanche a Kigali and such documentaries as Shooting Dogs and The Last Just Man, the thesis emerges that it may be impossible to make a bad film about Rwanda's recent history. But that cannot diminish the power of the approach taken by this film, filtering the horror through the eyes and the mind of one man, a soldier and would-be protector who, when asked what the innocents should do during the carnage, can only advise: "Tell them to stay home. Tell them to hide."
Quebec actor Roy Dupuis (The Rocket) delivers an intense performance as Dallaire, capturing-- through inaction and impassivity as much as anything -- the impotent rage felt by the general as 100 days of violence left a million dead while another 5.5 billion turned their backs.

Keiran Grant - www.EyeWeekly.com (Toronto)
 This faithful adaptation of Lt. General Romeo Dallaire's first-hand account of the Rwandan genocide tucks some hallucinatory passages into an otherwise straightforward play-by-play. The mechanics of Rwanda's political and tribal crisis, the UN's bureaucratic inaction and the complicity of countries such as the US and France – all so complex and infuriating in the book – is puréed for narrative ease, yet Spottiswode captures the horror of events by revealing carnage incrementally in relation to Dallaire's increasing despair.


Shake Hands can't escape made-for-TV triteness, but what does hit home comes thanks to Dupuis – the picture of military professionalism and quiet, emotional agony as Dallaire. It's a case of a great actor doing justice to a great man.
Normand Provencher - Le Soleil (Montreal - translated)
 While Dupuis is virtually impeccable, I'm sorry to say that Spottiswoode's (Tomorrow Never Dies) direction is so ordered, conventional, clinical even, that he never finds the right tone or rhythm to evolve his tortured character. Not enough to make you not like the film, just enough to make you think it could have been done better.
Filmed in English, Shake Hands with the Devil is without a doubt the film that will help put the name of Roy Dupuis on the international stage. He's not content to play the role of Roméo Dallaire, he IS Roméo Dallaire. He inhabits the character completely.
Scott Foundas - Variety (Hollywood)
Yet, Shake Hands with the Devil fails on both counts, with Spottiswoode's sluggish pacing and screenwriter Michael Donovan's didactic, on-the-nose dialogue ("It's extermination, like the Jews!") giving the pic the embalmed quality of a second-tier movie-of-the-week.
Dupuis, meanwhile, is too much self-confident swagger and too little agonized inner conflict - even when he has been rendered powerless by his UN superiors - to sync up with the Dallaire we have come to know through his many outspoken public appearances.

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