Che: Part Two (2008)

Soderbergh emphasizes observation over ideology with an eye toward the mundane details of life on the front lines of a revolution, building to a thrilling climax in the first half and a kind of grace in the second. The film renders Guevara as an undemonstratively magnetic figure driven by his convictions.

The critic views the film as a grim, melancholic depiction of Guevara's failed Bolivian campaign, marked by hunger and defeat. They single out Benicio Del Toro's quiet and magisterial performance for praise, especially in a tense persuasion scene.

Part Two stands alone effectively as Soderbergh's study of Che Guevara's failed 1966 Bolivian campaign. It highlights the director's focus on the realities of revolutionary struggle and Benicio del Toro's restrained performance, while noting that the film's academic tone and emphasis on source material details can sometimes hinder dramatic flow.

Soderbergh’s professed neutrality toward Guevara’s life and times succeeds mostly in leeching the emotion out of them, resulting in a work of intelligent fastidiousness rather than vivid inspiration. Part Two traces the leader’s ultimately doomed attempt to bring the revolution to the rest of Latin America as a death march.

The film rebels against biopic conventions by focusing on the rigors and specifics of armed struggle rather than psychological drama. It is an extraordinary, challenging work that favors action and strategy over emotional aha moments.

The second part works better on its own as a coherent, mysterious evocation of Che's final doomed campaign in Bolivia. Soderbergh's austere, experimental approach shows only the outer man and avoids conventional character insight or cliché.

The two-part biopic is a highly worthwhile, professionally accomplished project that informs viewers but in its obsessive devotion to precise documentation forgets to inspire. Part Two, focusing on the failed Bolivian uprising, is all down, down, down and seems to go on forever with indistinguishable skirmishes.

Soderbergh's two-part film is a scrupulous but emotionally flat procedural on guerrilla warfare that avoids hagiography and shows the shift from dream to disillusion. It is marked by precise detail yet lacks dramatic impact or deep insight into its subject's passions.

The film is an epic but ultimately evasive portrait that prioritizes formal sophistication and factual detail over moral reckoning with its subject. It excels as a master class in filmmaking technique while falling short as history.

The film reconstructs Che's failed Bolivian campaign with impressive persuasiveness and observes him nobly leading his men, but it lacks tension or clear sense of what Soderbergh aimed to achieve.

Soderbergh's ambitious four-hour presentation of Che's life is defiantly nondramatic, with part two feeling like a military training documentary that lacks excitement. Neither half stands alone satisfyingly, and the whole offers more aggravations than rewards.

The critic views it as a commendable achievement in documenting history with integrity, though it lacks dramatic tension and may disappoint those seeking entertainment. They single out the authentic mise-en-scene and Benicio Del Toro's portrayal of a tragic hero for praise.

Soderbergh and Del Toro treat Che’s life as a realist epic in this audacious four-hour-plus film focused on guerrilla struggles. The marches across Cuba and through Bolivia’s jungles are deeply tedious, but Guevara’s unbendable will centers the two missions—one ascendant, one disastrous—and Soderbergh is ultimately victorious.

The critic finds Che Part 2 an uncompromised but dragging work that excels in authenticity and Del Toro's performance depicting Guevara's downfall, though it lacks human depth and moves too slowly.

Praises Part 2 for its intimacy and tragic portrayal of Che's doomed Bolivian revolution, contrasting it with the more ponderous Part 1.