Che Part One (2008)

Cautiously Recommended

France/Spain/USA

Feature Film

Director: Steven Soderbergh

Writers: Peter Buchman, Ernesto Che Guevara

Cinematographer: Steven Soderbergh (as Peter Andrews)

Composer: Alberto Iglesias

Cast: Benicio Del Toro, Demián Bichir, Santiago Cabrera, Vladimir Cruz, Alfredo De Quesada, Jsu García, Kahlil Méndez, Elvira Mínguez, Andrés Manuel Munar, Julia Ormond, Catalina Sandino Moreno

Soderbergh’s admirably restrained and authentic feeling yet frustratingly unenlightening biopic of the larger-than-life Argentinian revolutionary, Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, focuses on the guerrilla campaign that led to the Cuban revolution of 1959, depicting the man as the principled yet ruthless soldier that we all know and love/hate, without seemingly even attempting to reveal the man beneath the beret. Iain.Stott