“No doubt it will be back to the drawings board for Che, Steven Soderbergh‘s intricately ambitious, defiantly nondramatic four-hour, 18-minute presentation of scenes from the life of revolutionary icon Che Guevara,” writes Variety‘s Todd McCarthy.
“If the director has gone out of his way to avoid the usual Hollywood biopic conventions, he has also withheld any suggestion of why the charismatic doctor, fighter, diplomat, diarist and intellectual theorist became and remains such a legendary figure; if anything, Che seems diminished by the way he’s portrayed here.” HE response: I couldn’t disagree more. In The Argentine Guevara seems about as brave, thoughtful, resourceful and heroic as anyone could possibly imagine or portray him.
“Originally announced as two separate films, The Argentine and Guerrilla,” to be released separately, the film was shown as one picture, with intermission, under the title Che (although neither this nor any other credits appeared onscreen) in its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival.
“Neither half feels remotely like a satisfying stand-alone film, while the whole offers far too many aggravations for its paltry rewards. Scattered partisans are likely to step forward, but the pic in its current form is a commercial impossibility, except on television or DVD.”