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Beyond the Gates

It's weepy on the other side of the fence

By BRETT MICHEL | March 29, 2007

2.0 Stars

VIDEO: Watch the trailer for Beyond the Gates.

As the end credits roll on Michael Caton-Jones’s film, the latest to deal with the Rwandan genocide, it’s hard not to tear up. We’re shown image after image of the production’s crew members accompanied by text detailing terrible personal losses, and the empathetic realization dawns that these are actual survivors of April 1994’s horrific slaughter. If only the film itself had presented their plight in more than two dimensions. Instead, its subject is White Man’s Guilt, as represented by Joe Connor (Hugh Dancy), a naive young idealist teaching at the École Technique Officielle, a secondary school in the Rwandan capital of Kigali. Filming at the actual location is undercut by the use of fictional characters; even so, John Hurt brings moral verisimilitude as Father Christopher, the school’s headmaster. Although more dignified than Caton-Jones’s Basic Instinct 2 (what wouldn’t be?), Beyond the Gates is nearly as languid.

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Topics: Reviews , Crime, War Crimes, Genocide, More

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