Che: Part One
Che: Part One
NR | 12 December 2008 (USA)
Che: Part One Trailers

The Argentine, begins as Che and a band of Cuban exiles (led by Fidel Castro) reach the Cuban shore from Mexico in 1956. Within two years, they mobilized popular support and an army and toppled the U.S.-friendly regime of dictator Fulgencio Batista.

Reviews
BootDigest

Such a frustrating disappointment

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FeistyUpper

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

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Tedfoldol

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

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Glucedee

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

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singersongwriter-06857

Why does Hollywood make movies about racist mass murderers and elevate them to hero status? The real Ernesto Guevara was a monster. This movie is an affront to humanity.

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braddugg

A terrific film that raises the spirit of a revolutionary to the hilt.This movie is a 2 part biopic that runs nearly four and a half hours. When I saw it for the first time at home on in 2009, I just took a ten-minute break after the completion of the first part and was dying to start the second part. After finishing the movie viewing, I was overwhelmed. I was very happy; there is an inspiration that I must make my life worth before I die. There is an incentive to value life.Ernesto Che Guevara is one of the most inspirational revolutionaries of the centuries the world over. The way he organized and won guerrilla wars was something that was a shock to many regimes in the American continents. The depiction of Che by Benicio Del Toro is something that took me by a surprise. Benicio Del Toro was intrepid in playing Che. Never did I feel, I was seeing an actor, all through it was just Che.The makeup was superlative. For the first ten minutes of the second part of the film, I was stunned. I could not recognize who is playing the character. So right is the disguise and so great is the acting. Cinematography and art direction in this could be used as references for generations to come. The film took me into 1950's and 1960's and made live in those times.From the word go to the last frame, there is perfection in craft technically. The spirit of revolution is in place. Cuba, Fidel Castro, Revolution, Bolivia, UN conference, Che, wow so many overwhelming elements.Kudos to Steven Soderbergh and perhaps this is his finest effort. Also to Benicio Del Toro. Benicio, you will live on as Che forever.A 5/5 for my favorite revolutionary films. One of the all-time great films this.

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generationofswine

To tell the truth, I was excited about the prospects of a Che movie, in this day & age I'd say that it's needed. Che certainly has a stigma behind him that the close minded among us like to tout the loudest, "he's a communist, he's a monster," so it was nice to be able to walk into a film about Che that I knew was not going to damn him with a strong political agenda.And I am a historian, I'll sit through long drawn out trash just to see Rome on the big screen. I've studied Che, don't worry, I understand it's Hollywood, I don't judge a movie based on how historically accurate it is or isn't, I don't necessarily even want to see a film that sacrifices entertainment for accuracy. I often have dull & boring as a product of my profession.That being said, I'd like to know, historically, how someone could make a movie about Che that's, well, boring. Not even the history books about the man managed to make him this boring. He was like a Latino Ethan Hunt, a master of disguise, highly skilled in the dark arts of espionage, he was the man that literally wrote the book on guerrilla warfare, & that's not here at all, at least not in any entertaining way.See this film to change your global views, not to be entertained. From what I know about Che, I was expecting...I don't know...something more James Bond & less, well, less dull.

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geoffreybaker

Listen: I LIKE ERNESTO GUEVARA. I LIKE ALL THE ACTORS. I LIKE SODEBERBERG.So why was this movie so absolutely, completely awful? Ever seen a movie over four hours long where at the end you feel like you know NOTHING about the hero? Ever seen a movie that plods along so slowly that you're begging for it to end... and yet despite all the time and detail, so much is still so inexplicable? If you are a fan or Che or revolutionary politics, go see The Motorcycle Diaries; Che comes across as young, brash, vibrant, idealistic, fun... you feel you know him.This movie, I'm afraid, is essentially retelling, page by awful page, the complete diary of Ernesto Guevara over a period of many years, without bothering to edit, explain, highlight or detail any one page over another. The tedious Marxist verbiage is repeated line for line as Che explains to one comrade or another the essence of the armed struggle; the long, slow daily boring grind of what its like to hide out in the jungle for months at a time is lovingly recreated...This movie needed an EDITOR!!!! Some SNAPPY DIALOGUE!!!! A DECENT SCORE!!! I apologize to all the Che fans out there who probably feel this endless tripe was a loving recreation of his life... but it wasn't... it was merely as exciting as if Steven Soderberg stood in your living room for five hours and READ you Che's diary, in a flat, even monotone.That's how boring it was. Using the same technique, you could turn the greatest stories ever told into unwatchable muck. The truth is that diaries are not good stories, by themselves. You have to figure out which are the exciting parts and which aren't. You have to punch up the dialog a bit beyond the "Then I told my comrade that the revolutionary struggle begins with the armed struggle, that the people cannot support us without understanding the nature of the Marxist dialectic through the viewpoint of a semi-feudal dictatorship...blah blah..." Listen, I KNOW Che was a lot more interesting that that. But sadly Soderberg doesn't bring him out... he hides him.You watch helplessly as Che and his revolutionary brothers in the second movie slowly starve to death as they hide in the jungle, forgetting, apparently, that to have an armed struggle you have to occasionally meet up with other people to struggle with. In retrospect, Che's entire Bolivian foray was probably the worst revolutionary decision ever made, and virtually suicidal; to enter a foreign country, hide in the vast jungle and then expect that somehow you will get the people in the cities, in industry, and on the farms to all join you and your foreign revolutionary brethren from Cuba and Panama and France and England ... but enough on Che's mistakes; let's get back to Soderbergs.The music was simply awful. Long irritating passages of near random noise just got in the way of what little development and action that might be occurring on screen.The dialog was similarly inept. Although better in the first movie, by the time the second rolls around, what little dialog there is is exceptionally wooden.Lastly, about two and a half hours of this movie should never have made it off the cutting room floor. We just didn't need to see the endless trekking through the jungle. The unbelievably slow buildups to most actual action could have been cut in half.Why did Matt Damon show up as a local village elder for a scene lasting under sixty seconds? That annoyed me.I would love to see a good movie about Che that really brings out the man behind the myth. How can you possibly, as Che II does, never mention except once that Che had a wife and five children? Because I really would like to a great movie about Che, and The Motorcycle Diaries would make a good start. I'd pay to see The Motorcycle Diaries Part II and Part III.But Soderberg's Che? Sadly, he comes across as nothing more than the icon we already know... a black and white image, easily silk-screened onto T-shirts.You learn nothing else. In five hours.

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