Dir. Steven Soderbergh, France/ Spain/US, 2008, 126 mins, English/Spanish with subtitles
Cast: Benicio Del Toro, Demián Bichir, Catalina Sandino Moreno
Review by Carol Allen
The Argentine born revolutionary leader Ernesto Guevara, better known as Che, was an iconic figure for the rebellious younger generation in the sixties. He was a hero and commander of Castro's successful Cuban guerrilla campaign against the government of Fulgencio Batista in the fifties and then leader of the failed Bolivian revolution against that country's dictatorship in the sixties. His face adorned a million or more tee shirts and he was the hero and role model of Wolfie Smith, leader of the self-proclaimed Tooting Popular Front, as played by Robert Lindsay in the satirical seventies sitcom Citizen Smith .
This first of Steven Soderbergh's two movies about Che deals with the Cuban revolution. The film is structured around grainy black and white sequences of Che's “hearts and minds” winning tour of New York in 1964, with Che surrounded by adoring fans and Julia Ormond as a respectful journalist interviewing him. It then flashes back to the fifties to tell the main meat of the story, returning intermittently to 1964. There are some historically intriguing scenes in the film, such as the early meeting of Fidel (Bichir) and Che hatching the plan to overthrow Batista in a small flat in Mexico and in the sixties section Che's address to the United Nations is particularly strong. Del Toro displays great presence in the title role and it was a wise decision to have him and the other main characters speaking Spanish with subtitles or a translator as appropriate, which makes them far more believable than if they had spoken in heavily accented English.
Apart from Che himself and to a lesser extent Fidel, few of the other characters are drawn in much detail. There are two young brothers, who want to join the revolution, who make a bit of an impact, as does Moreno (Maria Full of Grace ), who joins the film towards the end as fellow revolutionary Aleida March, later to become the second Mrs Guevara, presumably in Part 2. But otherwise the characters merge into a series of interchangeable, fervent faces in guerrilla camouflage uniforms. We get no clear picture of the political issues and background, such as the role of the CIA, although Che's emphasis on the importance that access to education and literacy plays in the fight for the people's freedom is interesting. The actual telling of the story is somewhat literally pedestrian with a lot of repetitive and seemingly interminable plodding through the jungle, enlivened by the odd battle sequence. True perhaps to how it was, but dramatically a bit weak. And good though Del Toro is, the film gives little insight into what made him such an iconic figure. One got far more sense of his character from Walter Salles' film The Motorcycle Diaries about the teenage Guevara and his journeys around Latin America , which made him the man he became. Here the two strongest characteristics of Che to emerge are the ever present cigar and the fact that he suffered from asthma ? an odd combination in someone who was by training a doctor.
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