Word: guevaras
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...that overthrew the pharaonic regime of Fulgencio Batista in Cuba 50 years ago, it is that they managed to change the world—and that they have lasted. Armed more with romantic idealists than ammunition, including men of the calibre of Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, the guerrilla movement led by Fidel Castro slowly but steadily challenged Batista’s rule in the late 1950s, promising an end to the dismal inequality and extreme poverty in Cuba. Following their victory, the revolutionaries became symbols of an enduring resistance against America and its values less than...
...overthrew one of Latin America's most putrid dictators, championed the poor (still a rare thing to do in Latin America) and showed the U.S. that its worst Monroe Doctrine impulses (not to mention the Mafia that was overrunning Cuba then) could be thwarted. People buy Che Guevara T shirts for more than just the lefty chic. The Miami exiles (many of whom backed Fidel Castro before he went communist) deserve their props too, despite the Elian Gonzalez mess. Most were not corrupt oligarchs and gusanos (worms, as Fidel Castro called them) but industrious working- or middle-class...
...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 confrontation at the UN between Guevara and ambassadors from other Latin American countries, Che is defined less by his rigorous fighting skills and seductive intellect than by his asthma...
...Roger Ebert put it: "No attempt is made to get inside the mind of this complex man, Guevara. We are told he was a medical student, suffered from asthma, was more ruthless than Castro, was the real brain behind the operation. Big deal. ... When we aren't getting newsreels, we're getting routine footage of guerrilla clashes in the jungle. ... All this movie inspires toward the Cuban Revolution is excruciating boredom...
...Ebert wrote this in 1969, in a review of the flop Hollywood bio-pic Che!, with the not-very-Latin Omar Sharif as Guevara. Yet most of Ebert's denunciations apply to Soderbergh's movie, which dispenses with the exclamation point - and with almost all of the compelling, sometimes contradictory drama in Che Guevara's life...