The Worst Film Ever

Good concept, poorly executed.

Absolutely amazing

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

The first two hours of this movie are superb. There are some very strong performances all round, and the activities are well researched and offer a fairly objective view of events. Obviously, many events are skirted over in order to fit the running time, but what is shown is a fairly accurate portrayal of history. The violence in particular is extremely well done, offering a very realistic portrayal of gunfire and its consequences, instead of some needlessly flashy OTT action.The problem comes around the 2 hour mark as Castro takes power of Cuba. Suddenly, the timeline lurches drastically to try and mention important events. The films low budget shows itself up as the film spans years and events with little or no regard to objective film making. The movie is about Fidel, however, over two hours in and we suddenly cut to a very badly filmed sequence showing the death of Che Guevara. Whilst certainly an important part of Fidel's life, the narrative shift from Fidel to Che seems clunky and out of place with the rest of the film. The desire to portray Fidel in a bad light, sacrifices the characterisation of the first half of the movie, and instead offers a clumsily scripted/filmed series of events designed to show Fidel in a bad light. The film should've ended when he took power. As it is, the final hour and a half ruin an otherwise great movie.

I must say this movie was quite well presented. It surprised me to see a self centered movie about Fidel Castro even it was produced by an american company.I don't want to talk about what Fidel has done or what he hasn't done as Cuba's president.I liked the movie because it presents a certain episode in Cuba's history. I disagree on the comments presented before about Fidel's actions against his political opponents because it's the director's and the producer's decision what episodes to present in a movie. As far as I know, they're free to talk only about certain moment in Cuba's history. It's ok to disagree on that, but there's no way to criticize it because it will be doing the same people criticizes on Fidel: his lack of acceptance to different points of view and his tolerance to people who don't agree with him.

This film is as if aliens who know or care nothing about either leftist or rightist politics came from another planet and catalogued Fidel's rise to power in Cuba. It very objectively chronicles the good and bad about the regime and pulls no punches.Undoubtedly, there is a considerable amount more bad than good about Castro (note: to those of you whose demonize Pinochet, Castro was worse) but we get the point just the same without having to catharticly dwell on the killed, tortured, exiled, and imprisoned souls of Cuba. Just gives us the facts... nice one.

Georgie Anne Geyer's book on Castro was one of the sources for this "Fidel," which I saw just last night on cable. I know a lot about this really good reporter on Latin American affairs, who was at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL, a few years before I majored in journalism at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana.And also I was in college from 1957-1961, a college with students from all over the world, and I was hearing a lot about Battista in 1958 and 1959 and why he should be ousted.In three hours anyone who sees this version of "Fidel" can gain insight into why and how Castro gained power in Cuba. His excesses have come from not wanting to lose that power.