Review of Che: Part One (2008) by Keith's R — 15 Feb 2012

Benicio del Toro as Che and Bichir as Fidel do a great job. But the movie has several problems. It's based on Jon Lee Anderson's biography about Guevara, and while it's the most known biography of the man in America and the one that opened to the world many unknown facts about Che's life it isn't the best for this period on Che's life. Anderson's book is brilliant at the beginning and the end but lacks a lot of information in the middle -from Che leaving for Cuba to him returning from Congo before leaving to Bolivia-. I remember the excitment of reading the descriptions of the fights of the guerrilla againts Batista troops in Paco Taibo's book. None of that is here.

One of the most important single facts in Che's life was when he judges two -or three?- of his men for betrayal. They receive death sentences and Che ask for a volunteer to kill them, as nobody volunteer he quickly walks towards them and shoot them. He later explains he did it to avoid his men feeling as cowards. That was the point of not return for him as a soldier. In the movie this scene is cut when the men are being judged.

But when I lost all respect for this movie was when in the extras one of the producers says that she didn't know Che was already death!