“I can’t predict how all of the questions and possibilities about Steven Soderbergh‘s Che will play out, but I can say — and will say — what a rare pleasure it is to have a film (or films) that, in our box-office obsessed, event-movie, Oscar-craving age, is actually worth talking about on so many levels,” writes Cinematical‘s James Rocchi.
“Bad biographical dramas try to tell you everything about a person’s life; good biographical dramas leave you inspired to find out the things not on-screen. Che is, by that yardstick, a very good biographical drama.
“To many, Che Guevara is an icon; to most, he’s an image on a t-shirt. To some, he’s a murderer; to others, an inspiration. Che (which I’ll use throughout this review to refer to both films for reasons of clarity) does not show us the man behind the T-shirt; instead, it takes the more interesting direction of showing us how the man wound up on the T-shirt.
“Che doesn’t wallow in Guevara’s personal life — this is how he felt, this is how he loved, this is what he believed, this made him what he is — but simply shows us some (not all) of the events in Guevara’s life and how they changed him and changed history.”