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Movie Overview
Cast
• Benicio Del Toro
• Benjamin Bratt
• Franka Potente
Director
• Steven Soderbergh
MPAA Rating
R - for some violence.
Che (2008)

REVIEWS
NEWS
INTERVIEWS OTHER
OFCS Rating: 64% Fresh
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"I found this four-hours-plus movie sheer torture to watch during most of its long running time. 'Che' seems more like a guerilla handbook than a film."  ReelTalk Movie Reviews  Betty Jo Tucker

"Formally, it demonstrates the power of the aspect ratio in deciding our relationship to the story. Dramatically, the film is at once fascinating and completely annoying"  Beyond Hollywood  Brian Holcomb

B+
"Even for Soderbergh's itchy experimental trigger finger, Che is an awesome accomplishment of atypical filmmaking scope."  BrianOrndorf.com  Brian Orndorf

"...an uncomfortable mix of war procedural and unabashed hero worship; ingenious but flawed."  PopMatters  Chris Barsanti

4/5
"Guevara is too fascinating an individual to be confined to a story that can fit on a bumper sticker."  eFilmCritic.com  Dan Lybarger

2.5/4
"...undoubtedly possesses the feel of an overlong and distinctly self-indulgent piece of work..."  Reel Film Reviews  David Nusair

C+
"It never gets over being as dry as a Communist manifesto."  Ozus' World Movie Reviews  Dennis Schwartz

"'Che' fails to image a being of flesh who elicits empathy."  ReelTalk Movie Reviews  Donald J. Levit

2.5/4
"Too emotionally dry to embrace but too ingenious to dismiss, Che is a fascinating, problematic film."  Slant Magazine  Fernando F. Croce

C
"Its piecemeal character, lack of shading and lugubrious pace leave it not just incomplete but, despite the length, surprisingly shallow."  One Guy's Opinion  Frank Swietek

3/5
"A lengthy and complex portrait of Che as a revolutionary, a leader of a guerilla band, a doctor, a believer in obedience and loyalty, and a man willing to suffer for his beliefs."  Spirituality and Practice  Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat

"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."  Cinematical  James Rocchi

5/10
"Che Guevara, it seems, shall ever be a symbol, and Che doesn't even seem interested in cracking that, thus leaving us no more enlightened than when we stepped in."  Window to the Movies  Jeffrey Chen

3/4
"A demanding work of cinematic structuralism that eschews most of the conventions of both the war film and the biopic."  MovieMartyr.com  Jeremy Heilman

"There is precious little in these movies to fill out our understanding of what it was that made Che a rebel, a leader of men, and the repository of the romantic dreams of several generations of armchair revolutionaries"  Film.com  Jonathan F. Richards

"As if watching a gaggle of mountaineers indifferently scale K2."  UGO  Keith Uhlich

3/5
"The emphasis on the brotherhood of the ragtag rebels wouldn't be out of place in a 1940s war film"  Film-Forward.com  Kent Turner

6/10
"Benicio del Toro looks the part, but Soderbergh does little to flesh out his other characters. Just following what is happening is hard work."  rec.arts.movies.reviews  Mark R. Leeper

"[E]xists as a matter of Guevara's perspective. Soderbergh and Del Toro -- this truly is a tour de force performance -- puts us so totally into his head that it's impossible not to sympathize with him."  Flick Filosopher  MaryAnn Johanson

2.5/4
"Something is amiss when I come away with more to chew on about what guided the filmmaker's technique than what drove the title subject."  TheMovieReport.com  Michael Dequina

C+
"A strikingly constructed, handsomely HD-filmed museum display piece."  Lessons of Darkness  Nick Schager

2.5/5
"Movie Che is a towering idealist who just keeps on coming, but he lacks any sense of character. He is heartless, all computer chips and wires inside. He's the Revolutionator."  Filmcritic.com  Paul Brenner

4/5
"This is a film that, much like its subject, is a flawed and fascinating work whose ultimate power is derived less from the ideas of the man at its center than by his intense charisma, supplied here by an amazing central performance from Benicio del Toro."  eFilmCritic.com  Peter Sobczynski

4/5
"The film is a series of skirmishes, betrayals, confrontations and dislocations that Soderbergh directs with a matter-of-fact understatement and real cinematographic artistry. Even major action scenes feel eerily authentic, never like a big movie."  Shadows on the Wall  Rich Cline

B
"Che offers a long look at a man who gave up comfort and power in Cuba for a lot of suffering in the wilds of Bolivia."  Laramie Movie Scope  Robert Roten

B+
"... two films and a unified work with each half mirroring, complementing and informing the other."  Seattle Post-Intelligencer  Sean Axmaker

9/10
"Less the story of a man than the story of the actions he performs... It's hard to imagine a fuller version of what creating the Cuban Revolution must have looked like."  Antagony & Ecstasy  Tim Brayton

3.5/4
"the curative to the Hollywood biopic formula"  Film Freak Central  Walter Chaw
OFCS Rating: 64% Fresh
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