Che
Benicio Del Toro stars as the iconic revolutionary
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Friday, 02, Jan 2009 01:07
Directed by Steven Soderbergh, out now, starring Benicio Del Toro and Julia Ormond, running time 126 mins.
In a nutshell…
Expansive historical biopic.
What's it all about?
In the mid-1960s Ernesto 'Che' Guevara recounts his role in the Cuban Revolution of the late 1950s to a journalist, recalling his friendship with future leader Fidel Castro and how he helped take Cuba in 1959.
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Who's in it?
Benicio Del Toro rose to fame as mumbling criminal Fred Fenster in Bryan Singer's classic crime thriller The Usual Suspects in 1994. He went on to appear in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Guy Ritchie's Snatch before winning an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in drug drama Traffic. He will appear in a remake of classic horror The Wolfman later this year.
Julia Ormond co-starred in Legends of the Fall and First Knight in the mid-1990s, while she also played the title role in a remake of Sabrina opposite Harrison Ford in 1995. She then withdrew from acting and Che Part One marks one of her first major big-screen appearances in a number of years.
Director Steven Soderbergh made his name nearly 20 years ago with the indie hit Sex, Lies and Videotape before achieving huge success with the likes of Out of Sight, Erin Brockovich and Traffic. More recently he has been responsible for the Ocean's 11 franchise with close collaborator George Clooney.
Likelihood of a trip to the Oscars
Nominations for both Del Toro and Soderbergh are possible (and probably deserved), but the Academy is notoriously fickle and ongoing Cuban political tensions may scupper its chances. Concessionary technical nods are perhaps more likely.
What the others say
"Part One of Soderbergh's Che epic dismantles the cliches and myths to craft a dream-like if frustrating essay on the heroism and the claustrophobia of war, perfectly centred by a compelling star performance." - Empire
"What we might hope for are revealing human moments in the fray, and physical demonstrations of the way this relentless campaign worked. What we get is almost purely the latter." - Telegraph
So is it any good?
Hailed by many critics as the first great film of 2009, Soderbergh's epic study of the Cuban Revolution's poster boy is a welcome return to form for the director who has spent the past few years wrestling his indie sensibilities with more mainstream fodder. In Che Part One (Part Two is released in February) he presents a complex and relatively fast-paced account of the revolutionary leader, centring on the 1958 campaign to take Cuba with Fidel Castro.
Benicio Del Toro takes on Ernesto 'Che' Guevara in a performance of impressive restraint which showcases the actor's range considering he first came to most people's attention as the flamboyant Fred Fenster in The Usual Suspects. Fifteen years and one Oscar later and Del Toro portrays Che as an introverted intellectual who follows Castro to Cuba in the late 50s in the hope of spreading the revolution to Latin America.
Dedicated to the cause but never seeming entirely comfortable with a gun, Del Toro's Che is a mysterious and meditative individual around his own people, emanating quiet charisma as he busies himself with the organisation of Castro's grand plan.
Portrayed as a doctor first and military strategist second, his ideological passions are largely restricted to the UN where he picks verbal fights with assembly members in successive flash-forwards to the 60s.
As with Traffic, for which Del Toro won his Oscar, Soderbergh punctuates the film with impressively stark visual styles, the Cuba campaign intercut with scenes shot in grainy black-and-white of Che addressing the UN and facing penetrating questions from Julia Ormond's journalist, his answers to which double as a voiceover narration.
Soderbergh presents both a human drama, and, in the final act, a gripping war movie as the 1959 assault on Santa Clara is depicted practically bullet-by-bullet in an impressive sequence of tense street-fighting.
What's perhaps missing are more probing details on Che himself. While his ideology and personality are depicted with broad brushstrokes, attempts to form a greater understanding of the man beyond the front-line or the training camp are largely sacrificed for the wider view.
8/10
Catch Che Part Two in February.
Nick Goundry