Che!

Richard Fleischer's biopic about the eponymous Argentinian revolutionary has been widely known as one of the biggest embarrassments in cinema history. Watching "Che!", I didn't interpret it as a particularly bad movie. What it is: extremely corny. As I understand it, the movie is historically accurate. It's just that, aside from all the overacting, Omar Sharif as Che Guevara looks silly and Jack Palance as Fidel Castro always looks as if he's about to fall asleep. In fact, Fidel adopts Che's comments as his own, just like Daffy Duck does with Porky Pig's suggestion in "Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2 Century"! There has been news of Steven Soderbergh's upcoming biopic about Che Guevara, with Benicio Del Toro playing the role. It'll probably come out better than this one. This mostly functions as an example of a movie intended as serious coming out really funny. Worth seeing for that.

Also starring Cesare Danova (Mayor Carmine in "Animal House"), Woody Strode and Barbara Luna.

With more than it's fair share of wooden acting 'Che!' seems doomed from the word go.

Omar Shariff attempts to breathe life into his overtly asthmatic portrayal of the revolutionary icon, Ernesto Che Guevaro, but is held back by the sheer lack of factual references. Jack Palance portrays Fidel Castro, in a manner that could almost have been written by the US government, as a man not able to fully think things through for himself. The film portrays the July 26th movement as an inept band of unwashed desperados who want to take over Cuba, but with only sheer luck, & government ineptitude, helping them to ultimately win through.

Covering the period of time from Che's first arrival on Cuban soil in 1956 until his Bolivian death in 1967, 'Che!' struggles with both poor screenplay and locations, but still trys to maintain a sense of purpose throughout. It could have been so much better. The political oppression that led to the overthrow of the Batista regime is totally glossed over & the rebels life, in the Sierra Madre, is portrayed as almost luxurious with Batista's troops wandering around waiting to be shot. Constant monologues, as a means to link scenes, prove to be more irritating than useful, and you find yourself wishing for the what little action there is to resume.

The film truly dies when Guevara leaves Cuba for Bolivia, with Shariff becoming more asthmatic and psychotic by the minute, until his ultimate capture in the mountains and his eventual murder in the backroom of La Higuera's village schoolhouse.

Any half decent film director would probably relish the chance to make a bio-pic of the legend that is Che Guevara. Che is an icon who deserves to have a film biography worthy of his legend, in the same manner of the bio-pics of Chaplin, Gandhi, Biko, Morrison etc.

It was brave of the makers of this film to release it in 1969 when the U.S. war against Communist North Vietnam still raged. It does depict a **failed** attempt to foment revolution in the Third World and on balance it is a negative portrayal of a professional revolutionary. Given the times, any depiction of Guevara and Fidel Castro showing them as human was a bold move.

In the U.S. most publicity has been garnered by Castro's bitterest enemies (those wonderful folks who brought you the **Elian** affair). Fidel has his supporters here, and around the world, also. Many of them seem to have posted comments at this site. The title of this movie is "Che!", not "Fidel!". Naturally, Castro's role will be a secondary one, a decision Castro's supporters seem unable to forgive.

Everyone knows how the story ends, and that is where the movie starts, with Che Guevara's body being transported by helicopter down from the one-room schoolhouse where he was apparently executed after being wounded and captured by an elite unit of the Bolivian Army. It's a strikingly beautiful, almost elegiac shot with the slopes of the Andes stretching to the horizon in the background. The movie proceeds in a semi-documentary style, the story told in flashbacks by Guevara's old Comrades (and some old enemies). Some of the Comrades, visibly aged, give their interviews from prison cells.

While Guevara's early life in Argentina isn't depicted, there is a soundless, striking scene early in the film of Cuban women protesting the dictatorial Battista regime, only to be massacred by Cuban soldiers ("We heard you calling, Cuba and we came...") that well explains what motivated young Ernesto and other youths from Latin America's upper classes to join the Cuban revolutionaries. From there we trace Che's transformation from idealistic medical graduate to hardened guerrilla fighter--summed up in a moment when in the heat of battle he picks up a rifle and leaves his doctor's kit on the ground.

I also disagree with the many criticisms of the portrayal of Fidel Castro by Jack Palance. Palance's movie career was distinctly on the down slope when he accepted the part, but he always had **macho**. Here he captured the 6'4" Castro's dominating physical presence in a land of mostly short statured people.

It is a real pity that this motion picture has completely disappeared. There is not a commercial version of it available anywhere. In the future, perhaps after Omar Sharif has died, this portrait of one of the twentieth century's most charismatic figures will be recognized as the rare achievement it is.

This film was almost hooted into oblivion by the critics at the time of its release, so when I saw it on one of the Cinemax channels last night, I was surprised that it wasn't much worse. A few months ago I saw the highly acclaimed docudrama on Fidel on Showtime, and this film, while not as good as the Showtime drama, is not all that much worse either.

First the bad stuff. Jack Palance's portrayal of Fidel Castro must rank as one of the worst performances ever to appear on screen. During the first half of the film, he spends most of the time rolling a lit cigar around in his mouth and making weird facial grimaces, most of which he seems to have forgotten by the second half. Moreover, he makes Castro come across as a dim-witted doofus who is always helped to see the right course by the brilliant Che, rather than portraying Castro as the brilliant strategist and tactician he was. Secondly, although the film is in English, much of the spoken dialogue sounds like a dubbed movie. Maybe that's because one of the principal supporting actors is Italian.

That having been said, the film's history is, quite surprisingly, fairly accurate. It accurately depicts how Castro's forces were almost completely wiped out after the arrival from Mexico, and Castro was left with a force numbering less than twenty. Nevertheless, he survives and gradually wins the support of the peasants, so that eventually he has a guerrilla force numbering in the thousands. The fact that Guevara was unable to pull off the same feat in Bolivia, due largely to his own megalomania that prevented his listening to the Bolivian peasants, is accurately portrayed as well. This isn't available on video and isn't likely to come to a theater, so you can probably see it only on cable. If it comes along, it's worth a watch.

Reason why this movie doesn't ever work out as a good one is because it really has no story to tell, or it at least seems that way, due to the entire way this movie got done and told.

Just don't watch this movie expect to learn anything. While watching this movie you'll have no idea what Che and his buddies are all fighting for and what they want to achieve, if you know nothing to little about Che Guevara and the Cuban revolution. Perhaps this can be blamed on the fact that this is an 1969 movie. Only 2 years after Che's death, so his story was still fresh back in the minds of the audiences at time. Therefore the movie perhaps felt no need to ever explain anything or to go into detail. But this movie was already much hated back in its day, so of course there is plenty more wrong with this movie.

Not only the story won't learn you anything but you also won't learn a thing about the person Che. Nothing in this movie justifies why he is globally regarded still such an icon, since the movie doesn't show anything great or heroic that he ever achieved and his personality in his movie is just very bland as well.

I can't really blame Omar Sharif for it though, while many other still seem to do so. In my opinion the blame should be put with its writing and directing. The story is already bad to begin with by the entire way it gets told makes it all the more worse.

What I also really didn't like about the storytelling was the random insertion of random people narration the events straight into the cam, as if this was a documentary. It comes across as incredibly cheap and lame, also since often the actors just aren't the greatest ones.

Even Jack Palance is real bad in his role. He is supposed to play Fidel Castro but instead he seems more like a caricature of him. And to be frank, he made Castro come across like an idiot. Perhaps this all was intentional though, for propaganda reasons.

The way this movie got shot and all of its action really reminded me of a "The A-Team" episode. I of course love "The A-Team" but this doesn't really seem like a compliment for a movie that tries to tell a serious, historically relevant story.

Perhaps the movie is not as bad to watch as its reputation might suggest but still it's truly really far from a good movie.

5/10

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