Don Cheadle: 5 Awesome Performances & 5 That Sucked

1. Paul Rusesabagina - Hotel Rwanda (2004)

In stark contrast to Miles Ahead, Cheadle's haunting, brilliant performance in Hotel Rwanda is a masterpiece of few brush strokes. It is a story of superheroic scale and devastation told in jarringly human terms, as the world implodes around hotel manager Paul Rusesabagina who tries incredibly hard to rebuild it as it falls.

Cheadle's frantic, almost hopeful performance is the perfect foil to the film's sense of outrage. Though it doesn't really push the agenda too much, Hotel Rwanda stands as a monument to Western shame in the Rwanda genocides told through the eyes of a horribly normal man.

His Rusesabagina is a picture of decency, and a lesson in retaining humanity in unthinkable conditions, enduring impossible gut-punches with poise and determination to just keep on keeping on. And in that stubborn humanity is the film's most haunting image: of Cheadle sanctifying himself with a gun to his head.

And now on to Cheadle's performances that weren't quite so brilliant...