Che: Part One (2008)

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

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.

This film allows its themes to grow organically out of its depiction of the Cuban Revolution. Most of the dialog is very simple and straightforward. Perhaps the most important thing Che Guevara is shown doing, besides functioning as Casto's subordinate and as a military leader in his own right, is simply listening to other people.Guevara is portrayed as a person who has idealistic and firmly held beliefs, and acts on them. It is very difficult to oppose such a person, and Guevara himself illustrates this theme when he comments to a journalist that the primary motivation of successful revolutionaries is adoration of a cause and of a people.Sonderburgh does a great job of directing this film, which does not have a very large budget, and has few actors. Del Toro dominates the film, but Sonderburgh lets the environment and the faces of the other actors contribute to the film's themes.

This first part of Ernesto Guevara biopic can be watched on its own. In fact, having watched also the second part, I must confess I had rather stopped with the first installment.Ernesto Guevara led a very intense and adventurous life. There is an excellent film about his formative years (The motorcycle diaries) which details how Guevara got to know about the miseries of the South American continent and decided to do something to re-dress the injustice.In this movie we lack any information about the idealistic background that moved Guevara. The style is very documentary-like and detached. In fact, even too detached. The main part of film is in colour, showing Guevara reaching Cuba in 1956 with Fidel Castro and the other revolutionaries and fighting their way to Havana. Also in colour is a short flashback in Mexico, with Guevara and Castro meeting the first time.Interspersed in the movie are grainy, black & white scenes about Guevara 1964 trip to the UN. These scenes are very annoying for those who watch the film in the original version (in Spanish), and understand both English and Spanish. Guevara is interviewed in English, all questions are translated in English and he answers in Spanish, making the whole process unbearably dull.Sadly, also the long guerrilla part of the movie is equally unexciting. Obviously, even guerrilla fighters must have some dull moments in their life, but here it looks like they have nothing else. Given the documentary-style, we are shown countless scenes of the long march through the island, the most (and only) dramatic moment being the taking of Santa Clara.Considering the events depicted the major political overturning and the years of fighting spent by Guevara and his companions, the result is sorely lacking drama and tension. Benicio Del Toro does a good job, playing the part without any fanatic idealism, but rather with a human, melancholic side. Unfortunately he is not enough to make the movie raise from fake documentary into compelling biopic Disappointing.P.S. big mistake morphing what is perhaps the most famous photo of Guevara into a quasi-resemblance with Del Toro...

First of all, I am someone who is very interested in history and especially in the Cuban revolution and the life of Ernesto "Che" Guevara, so I expected a lot of this movie divided in two parts...Well, I am very disappointed about the result. First of all, it would have been interesting to present Che Guevara before the beginnings of the revolution, to explain his reasons, his first contacts with corruption, submission, poverty, politics and revolution. One should have shown the youth of this man, one should have talked about his voyages, of the events that forged his mind and his ideology. Instead of this, the viewer is introduced to the Che Guevara as he is already formed and forged just before the revolution.If they hadn't enough time to do a more profound portrait of this legend, I ask myself why the films shows many unnecessary dialogues and scenes in the Cuban jungle during the guerrilla fights. This whole beginning of the movie seems just to be a recitation of Che's most famous speeches, but doesn't look beyond and is sometimes without any chronology. The movie seems just to be based on a lot of intelligent words and speeches, without showing the true intention of it. The few fight scenes which interrupt the endless dialogues, seem somehow poor and there is not just a lack of action or tension, but also of emotion during the little combat scenes that would show us why all this was worth dying for.In the end, the movie ends as strange as it began, the real arriving and the real triumph of the victorious revolution and the development of Che's personality during his implication in a new government is not shown and the film seems to be quite incomplete, as if a little chapter of a giant book was chosen without reading or telling its beginning or continuation. The second part of the movie works the same way, but it finishes at least with something concrete.All in all, I am really disappointed about this movie and would have expected more about it.