Che: Part One (2008)

The critic calls it a monumental achievement and a great movie that rewards patience and proper attention. They single out its formal audacity and eschewal of traditional heroics in focusing on the process of revolutionary struggle rather than conventional biopic portraiture.

The critic calls it an intelligent, fast-moving, well-researched film that offers a convincing account of the bitter struggle and a portrait of a great and complex revolutionary. The exciting, adventurous narrative with Guevara in virtually every scene is singled out for praise.

The critic finds Part One a dream-like if frustrating essay on the heroism and claustrophobia of war, perfectly centred by a compelling star performance. They single out the final battle for Santa Clara as a stunning set-piece.

The critic praises the film’s resistance to conventional biopic tropes by emphasizing guerrilla strategy and tactics over psychology, singling out its meticulous compositions and the one emotionally naked moment involving a recalcitrant horse.

The review praises Soderbergh’s measured approach that eschews grand gestures for an absorbing, thoughtful focus on personalities and political arguments. It highlights Benicio Del Toro’s commanding performance stressing Che the man rather than the hero, while noting the film grips intellectually but may seem dry to general audiences.

The four-hour, two-part film contains a surfeit of ideas and amazing scenes but is held together by mush, with lengthy battle sequences that feel slapped-together and a lack of visceral connection. It is fascinating in theory but more compelling as an intellectual exercise than as an actual moviegoing experience.

The critic views Soderbergh’s two-part epic as a martial poem focused on arms and the man, praising its scope across insurgencies while noting its austere, repetitive motifs of facial hair, tobacco, and militant rhetoric.

The review highlights the film’s structure as two separate stories with Part One ending before the triumph in Havana, commending its focus on guerrilla training and deployment in the Sierra Maestra while noting omissions of Che’s later tyrannical actions.

The critic describes the film as a bold and possibly perverse endeavour, a rangy 'guerrilla biopic' with painstaking fidelity to the factual record of Che's achievements. The arduous trudge of revolutionary warfare is singled out as the core experience, which may enlighten or perplex depending on taste.

The critic finds the film bogged down in repetitive battle scenes due to excessive fascination with the mechanics of guerrilla warfare. The failure to challenge the myth of Che or provide a more intimate look at the man is singled out for complaint.

Soderbergh’s professed neutrality toward Guevara’s life and times succeeds mostly in leeching the emotion out of them. Too emotionally dry to embrace but too ingenious to dismiss, it is a fascinating, problematic film of intelligent fastidiousness rather than vivid inspiration.

The critic finds the two-part biopic a highly worthwhile, professionally accomplished project overall. In its obsessive devotion to precise documentation, however, the film forgets to inspire, with Benicio del Toro's robust yet subtle portrayal singled out as the heart of the work.

Soderbergh and Del Toro treat Che’s life as a realist epic in an audacious four-hour-plus film focused on the guerrilla struggles. The critic singles out Guevara’s unbendable will, as embodied by Del Toro, and the irreducible language of the marches, rivers, and battles across Cuba in Part One.

The critic finds Soderbergh's approach to Che's role in the Cuban revolution a calm, unspectacular procedural that comes close to documentary in its historical accuracy and focus on the demands of guerrilla warfare. Benicio Del Toro's restrained performance is singled out for praise as sincere and blending seamlessly with the quasi-documentary style.

The critic calls the TIFF screening of Part One an unadorned yet impressive achievement, praising its unsentimental, intimate depiction of the Cuban revolution as magnetically engrossing and understated like a tough-minded BBC film. Benicio del Toro's matter-of-fact performance and Soderbergh's efficient, literal documentary-like lens are highlighted for avoiding biopic clichés.

The critic finds Part One a ponderous but detailed procedural on the Cuban Revolution, highlighting the attention to the daily concerns and visual details of the guerrilla fighters while noting the lack of inner life for Che.