Shake hands with the devil

"Blame Belgium" is one simplistic message to be drawn from a docudrama presenting the memoir of the retired Canadian United Nations general (1993-4) in Rwanda, whose Shake Hands with the Devil was subtitled "The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda".

The movie version, directed by Ottawa-born Roger (48 Hrs, Turner & Hooch, Tomorrow Never Dies, And the Band Played On) Spottiswoode, is a grim reminder that some European colonists left a bigger mess than they'd found when they arrived in far-flung corners of the world. Of course, the whole sorry saga of Rwanda's colonial administration, civil war, genocidal divisions, bitter class system, interfering neighbours, ineffectual United Nations and indifferent global powers cannot be told, let alone explained, in a movie that's less than two hours long.

Instead, Rwandan history is summarised in the opening credits:

" Rwanda is a small country in Africa.

For centuries its 10 million citizens viewed themselves as one people.

In 1916, Belgium colonized Rwanda, introducing a system of identity cards separating the majority Hutus from the minority Tutsis.

The Tutsis were given preference in education, jobs and power.

In 1959, when Rwanda became independent, the Hutus rebelled and took over the government, exiling and killing Tutsis.

In 1990 a Tutsi-led multi-ethnic rebel force invaded from Uganda.

French troops intervened.

The invasion ended when both sides signed a peace treaty in 1993, a treaty the UN was sent to protect."

Almost every noun and verb in italics can be disputed (via Wikipedia).

Rwanda, together with Burundi and parts of Uganda, was a feudal kingdom for a couple of centuries, controlled by the ruling class of Tutsis, who had the same ethnic background as the realm's Hutu serfs and Taw pygmies.

During the 1880s carve-up of uncolonised parts of Africa, Rwanda was allocated to Germany; it was grabbed by Belgium during WW1 and became a League/UN mandate. Both sets of colonists maintained the Tutsi-dominated class system, but Belgium switched to supporting the majority Hutus prior to independence in 1962, when Burundi was separated out. Inter-class warfare lasted from the 1950s until the 90s.

Consequently, the Canadian general's increasing despair, and clinical depression arising from his impotent tour of UN duty, can be attributed to everyone's failure to understand that Rwanda was a feudal society on a par with many others (from Fiji and Iran to Nepal and Cambodia, the UK and Liberia to Haiti and Latin America) in which a self-appointed social elite ran things for their own benefit, as the Tutsis still do in Rwanda. All concerned in the 1990s blithely blamed "Hutu extremists" without wondering what had driven them to such bloodthirsty extremes.

The C$11-million docudrama primarily targeted TV and cable audiences in Canada, where the politically aroused lieutenant-general became a popular figure, best-seller and senator: Romeo Dallaire (played by lookalike Roy Dupuis). His naivety and the developed world's mendacity are well depicted and Rwanda's scenery is presented picturesquely, but this movie is a pitifully inadequate glimpse at a socio-political mess the Belgians and the UN stumbled into and out of.

TRON

The Disney studios made animation a global art form, and can also be credited with creating the first (1982) movie based on computer-generated images, TRON. The man credited with its success was writer-director Steven Lisberger, who hawked his ideas around Hollywood and finally found acceptance at Disney.

He co-produced the movie, investing his earnings from Animalympics (1980), and presumably earned a decent living subsequently from the Tron franchise in the form of its arcade games and other spin-offs. Because his only other films were Hot Pursuit (1987), an RKO action-comedy starring John Cusack and a young Ben Stiller, and Slipstream (1989), a low-budget UK scifi thriller starring Bob Peck (supported by Mark Hamill and Bill Paxton). Disney re-employed him (only as a producer, for the use of his "characters") for its long-awaited sequel, Tron: Legacy. Released in 2010, it also brought back the cult film's original stars, Jeff Bridges and Bruce Boxleitner.

Bridges, with his signature cocky grin, played Flynn, the master programmer "User" transformed into Clu, a character dropped inside his former company's master control system by its evil boss. He pals up with Tron, a heroic security programme who's User is his human equivalent, a security boffin (Boxleitner) worried about the company's megalomaniac senior executive (David Warner) whose voice reappears in the computer world as commander Sark and his Master Control Program (MCP).

A female boffin (Cindy Morgan, who only worked in TV later) also has a computer double, as does an elderly scientific character, and a third short-lived hero rides through the computer's linear systems with the valiant defenders of computer freedom. Their memories are stored in powerful Frisbee-like discs, and one of their fight-to-the-death games is a stylised version of jai alai (indicating how the whole project was inspired by the mid-70s craze for Atari's Pong - ping-pong - computer game).

Amazingly, despite occasional patches of hammy dialogue and action a la early Star Treks, the movie is still an attractive attempt at blending live action and CGI. It doesn't feel three decades old, and it will be interesting to see how timeless the first Star Wars movie feels by comparison.

Ice blues

Former US child actor Chad Allen, an out gay, had no worries about taking the lead role in the filmed adaptations made for cable TV of the Donald Strachey mysteries, featuring "America's first gay detective". Two of them appeared in 2008, On the Other Hand, Death and Ice Blues, following in the successful screen-steps of Shock to the System (2006) and Third Man Out (2005).

The novels' originality lay in the matter-of-factual presentation of Strachey as an Albany private detective who happens to be gay, and in a lifetime partnership with an assistant to a female New York senator. They were written by an American, Richard Lipez, using the pen name Richard Stevenson, starting with the not-yet-filmed Death Trick, published in 1981 prior to Lipez coming out (with the father-of-two getting divorced in 1989). Ten other books followed, and Lipez became a gay activist in an open relationship with a sculptor.

Newfoundland-born Sebastian Spence has played Strachey's partner in all four films, and the latest was filmed in his home city of Vancouver. All four have been directed by Canada-born Ron Oliver, whose IMDb entry notes that his gay marriage of 2000 ended in divorce after three years. Plots of the novels have been similarly out. In Third Man Out, a notorious outer of gays received death threats, in Shock to the System Strachey solved the murder of a student while the screenplay examined social attitudes and gay conversion; the third film in the series involved an older lesbian couple.

Ice Blues, less focused on homosexuality, sees Strachey investigating whys and wherefores in the funding of one of his lover's favourite charity organisations for the city's youth. The short (80-minute) screenplay includes a runaway girl, a drug dealer making porn movies, a family's corrupt law firm, a vanished mother and murdered son, millions in bearer bonds, a romantic policeman, an English black thug and height-challenged Strachey's even shorter ethnic-Chinese sidekick.

By the time the plot reaches its denouements, after mediocre fisticuffs, and the detective and his slightly fey and whimsical partner have kissed a few times, it has become a gay-accented version of a B movie. Competently acted, professionally produced, almost totally forgettable.