The general is returning to Rwanda in 2004 after an absence of 10 years. He's returning to the scene of one of the most nightmarish crimes of modern times, the massacre of 800,000 Rwandans in roughly 100 days, events that inspired the Oscar-nominated "Hotel Rwanda" and HBO's stark "Sometimes in April." The reality, however, is more mesmerizing than any fiction could be.

Dallaire was hardly a bystander during those 1994 events. He was the commander of the U.N. assistance mission to Rwanda, the general in charge of trying to keep the peace, the man Nick Nolte's "Hotel Rwanda" character is based on.

How and why Dallaire was prevented from doing that job is a powerful, chilling case study in what can happen to a man who tries to do the right thing by standing up to absolute evil, but who is forced to do so by in effect shaking hands with the devil.

As the general is driven into town from the airport at the capital city of Kigali, we hear his memories of "so many bodies we couldn't pick them up, howling dogs, the smell of death." We see, as happens periodically throughout the film, brief newsreel footage of corpses and even murders.

But the most troubling aspect of "Devil," directed by Peter Raymont, is not what we see, it's what we hear about what one observer calls "the incredible moral default on the part of the world" that allowed all this to take place. As U.N. special envoy Stephen Lewis puts it, the question is, "Are all humans human, or are some more human than others?"

Though Dallaire's force was small, he had large aims for it. He saw a chance to capture the murderous Interahamwe militia's arms depots, something that would have crippled the massacre before it got started. The United Nations, however, forbade the action out of fear of repercussions.

Though almost all observers insist he did all he could, his sense of responsibility haunted him even after he left the country, leading to suicide attempts, hospitalization for post-traumatic stress disorder and continual medication.