Film Reviews

Che Part II

• Rating:
• Director: Steven Soderbergh.
• Starring: Benicio Del Toro, Franka Potente, Carlos Bardem.
• Details: France/Spain/US / 131mins (15A).

Hopes that Part II would settle down and delve deeper into the mind of this fascinating man dissipate not long into this ‘sequel’: Che Part II is, frustratingly, the same movie all over again but because the Bolivian adventure isn’t as wildly known as his Cuban one, Part II is slightly more interesting. Or is it that despair and hopelessness is always a better story than success? Hoping to bring the revolution that was such a triumph in Cuba to the rest of the Americas, Che (Del Toro) resigns from his Cuban post and travels to Bolivia to kick-start a revolution and free the people from the corrupt government. Upon arrival, however, Che finds his rebel band ill equipped, disorganised, few on board with his mantra and that he isn’t trusted because he’s a foreigner. With the Bolivian army closing in on his ragbag group, Che’s unwavering dream of bringing socialism to the world begins to fade... Part II is more an A to B story than Part I was, dumping the fractured timeline and flashbacks that littered the first instalment, but is more a 2-hour skirmish (‘battle’ would be an exaggeration) than a plot. The two movies are about the wave of optimism that socialism can be powerful and life-changing (Part 1), although ultimately flawed (Part 2), but these are broad strokes and Soderbergh should have got under the fingernails of his subject; for a character that is in almost every scene of a 4 hour 17 minute epic, the director offers no new insight to Ernesto Che Guevara and that is unforgivable. It’s not that these two films are in any way terrible, it’s just that they should have been a lot better considering the characters and story Soderbergh at his disposal. This is nothing short of a missed opportunity and one is left wondering what Terrence Malick’s vision would have been if he saw through his initial plans to bring the life story to film.

Review by Gavin Burke