It’s not a big deal if Michael Medved and other rightie critics are ready to take advance potshots at Steven Soderbergh‘s Che, a film now being shot about the final frustrating (some would say ignoble) chapter in the life of Ernesto “Che” Guevara, when he was trying to launch a guerilla revolution in Bolivia. That’s if the finished film (which will be out later this year) takes what the righties may decide is an overly sympathetic or admiring view of the man, which is obviously a wait-and-see proposition at this stage. For what it’s worth, there is truth to the view that Guevara became a harsh dogmatist in the mid ’60s and bore little resemblance to the gentle humanist in Walter Salles‘ The Motorcycle Diaries. In fact, the more I think about it the less likely it seems that Soderbergh and costar Benicio del Toro can do much to glorify Guevara in this film. But this is neither here nor there. What matters is whether or not Soderbergh is going to shoot the Bolivian portion of Che in Spanish (which of course he has to do, having done the same thing in the Mexican sequences in Traffic). He at least needs to shoot both English- and Spanish- language versions of the film. I know for sure that del Toro and the other actors speaking Spanish-accented English will be laughable. Studio hack Richard Fleischer did this when he directed his uproariously bad Che! (1969) with Omar Sharif and Jack Palance, but Soderbergh cannot. I hope we’re all clear on this…it’s absolutely out of the question.