Che

Benicio Del Toro may have the mannerisms down pat but the essence of who Che Guevara was remains untapped. Photo / Supplied

Rating:

* *

Verdict:

Fails as human drama and as historical epic

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The Motorcycle Diaries

, Walter Salles' dewy-eyed portrait of the most romanticised figure of the 20th century, was based in part on the writings of Ernesto "Che" Guevara, so it was hardly surprising that it was so sympathetic. Soderbergh, by contrast, doesn't whitewash the character of the Argentine-born luminary of the Cuban revolution because he never manages - indeed never seems to try - to get anywhere near the man.

By the end of this film's two epic-length parts, we learn a few trivial things - I was not aware, for example, that Che smoked a pipe as much as a cigar - but if Soderbergh has an idea of who Che was, he doesn't let it slip here.

Certainly it is not to be found in Del Toro's title-role performance. He makes the compact and sinewy Che a lumbering, bearlike presence and at his best seems like a collection of mannerisms in search of a character: time and again we see an expression or gesture which, we may be sure, is a perfect mimic of the historical Che, but the man remains forever out of reach.

Incredibly, Soderbergh, who shot the film on high-definition video (under his other working name, Peter Andrews), takes four hours to tell a story without any of the important and interesting bits. The film's first half promisingly jumbles the chronology - the guerrilla campaign, Che's first meeting with Castro in Mexico in 1955, the famous address to the United Nations in 1964 - in a way that suggests there might be a point of view in the making. But that promise remains unfulfilled.

If it fails as human drama, it's a catastrophe as historical epic. A friend of mine remarked aptly that this is a film about Che that manages to be devoid of politics. The problematic elements of the man's character - the pleasure he took in summary execution of opponents and vacillating followers, for example - don't get a look in because the first film stops on January 1, 1959 as he marches towards victory in Havana and the second begins in 1967 when he is knee-deep in his ill-judged and doomed adventure in Bolivia - the peasant revolution that not a single peasant joined. The rest is silence: no Bay of Pigs, no missile crisis, no disenchantment with Russia, no African adventure.

Worse, part 2, which lasts so long it seems like it's being told in real time, seems less like a film than a geeky analysis of bush warfare. The ignominious execution in a small Bolivian village was probably as sordid as Soderbergh's depiction shows but it's hard to care after several hours of watching an uncharismatic asthmatic who likes shooting at things.

Peter Calder

Cast:

Benicio Del Toro, Demian Bichir, Santiago Cabrera, Carlos Bardem, Marc-Andre Grondin, Catalina Sandino Moreno.

Director:

Steven Soderbergh

Running time:

262 mins

Rating:

M (contains violence and offensive language) In Spanish and English with English subtitles.