Word: che
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...Occasionally, the film is enlivened by the guest appearances of familiar actors, sometimes cast appropriately (Lou Diamond Phillips as Mario Monje, Catalina Sandina Moreno as Che's second wife), sometimes not (Matt Damon as a priest-negotiator in Bolivia!?). But the major burden falls on its star, who nurtured the project for almost a decade. And Del Toro - whose acting style often starts over the top and soars from there, like a hang-glider leaping from a skyscraper roof, thinking there's nowhere to go but up - is muted, yielding few emotional revelations, seemingly sedated here. Except for one pungent...
...Laura Bickford, who produced Che with Del Toro, says that the first part (shot in the 2.35:1 scope ratio) is "more of an action film with big battle scenes," and the second part (shot in standard 1.85:1 wide-screen) is "more of a thriller." Actually, neither tag truly applies. Though Part 1 begins by hopscotching from 1955, when Castro and Guevara meet, to later scenes in Havana and New York, the film is far less interested in explaining Guevara's political importance than in showing how he operated in the two big campaigns; its mantra is process...
...Like Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down, this is a war movie that spends virtually all its time at war, showing how soldiers fight and die. Che's depiction of guerrilla war tactics is so minutely detailed, it could provide an illuminating education to West Point cadets, or Taliban recruits. With about 80% of the two-part picture taking place in the Cuban or Bolivian jungle, it's the woodsiest war movie ever, and not so much a long march as the daily log of a sylvan slog...
...first half of Che unreels as inspirational history, the second half unravels as tragedy. Part 2 is essentially a remake of Part 1, with many scenes repeated. Guevara has to instill military discipline in his ragtag rebels in Cuba, then in Bolivia. In both places he has to decide whether to accept underage volunteers. In both, he gives his men a chance to quit before the decisive battles, where they are fired on by unseen regular soldiers and suffer the deaths of friends who've made their big speech or sentimental impression moments before. The film suggests that...
...this is an earnest of Soderbergh's doggedly naturalistic, antidramatic approach here, which is admirable but enervating. The conflicts are almost entirely between Che and his men, between the platoon and their forest environment. Spending up to a year in the jungles of either Cuba or Bolivia, the soldiers seem trapped in some tropical Blair Witch Project, stripped of the scary bits. And forgive me for asking, but with all these young men separated from their girlfriends for such a long time, why (with one rapacious exception) do they never express any interest in women? The movie lets you infer...