Che movie is rotten

I haven't written about the new film about Che because I haven't had time. It's a shame that a major motion picture was made about the Argentine dirtbag murderer that once again fails to highlight how much of a dirtbag murderer he was. But what do you expect from a Hollywood director and an idiotic actor? I mean seriously, accuracy and intelligence are not the first things you think about when you hear that combination.

Anyway I thought you'd be interested in some choice quotes from some of the many bad reviews this stinker of a flick has gotten:

The whole movie is a forced march.
-David Edelstein New York Magazine

But Soderbergh's version of Che is too good to be true: Movie Che is a towering idealist who just keeps on coming, but he lacks any sense of character. He is heartless, all computer chips and wires inside. He's the Revolutionator...

Soderbergh's Che is a shallow, artificial archetype...

Worse, there is no narrative drama, no psychological depth, and no exploration of Guevara's personal history. Soderbergh asks us to accept Che without thinking or coming to any conclusions about him. As a result, in Part One, Che comes across like a subject out of Leni Riefenstahl; in Part Two, his tortures of the damned could have been directed by Mel Gibson.

-Paul Brenner, Filmcritic.com

Out-perversing Gus Van Sant’s Milk, Soderbergh makes a four-hour-plus biopic about a historical figure without providing a glimmer of charm or narrative coherence. One can’t accuse Soderbergh of pandering to feel-good piety because Che proudly resists sentimentality about people’s power, distribution of wealth, Marxist theology, radical chic or morbid celebrity.

Soderbergh glosses all that, yet still wins Leftist critical acclaim (and a WTF Cannes Best Actor prize for Del Toro’s inexpressive performance) because Che— dead or deadening—remains a politically correct icon. It requires some new kind of orneriness to take Che’s famous image (saintly pose in beret with a star or sexy pose with a cheroot hanging from his lip) and continuously alienate an audience from what it represents...

Neither rabble-rousing politician, humanist historian or trailblazing artiste, Soderbergh’s a Pseud.

-Armond White, New York Press

Soderbergh is nothing if not determined. As desultory and unsatisfying as "Che" is, it still bears the stamp of a personal obsession. But to what end exactly? Soderbergh adds very little to our knowledge of Guevara, both as icon and as human being. Mostly what we get are docudramatic snippets from a life all too hagiographically rendered. (Where are Che's death squads?)

-Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor

You can't spell cliché without "Che." And as I endured this mad dream directed - or perhaps committed - by Steven Soderbergh, I wondered where I'd seen it all before. The booted stomping through the greensward, the jungly target shooting? It's a remake of Woody Allen's "Bananas," right? Minus punch lines - or perhaps with them. "We are in a difficult situation," Che observes, at a point when his army is surrounded and forced to eat its horses...

This isn't a movie so much as a siege. When the screen flashed "Day 302," I thought it was updating me on how long I had spent in the theater without food, water or access to the Red Cross.

Che, although armed, allows himself to be taken alive, which means an amusing execution in the dust instead of righteous death in battle. Soderbergh...takes Che's point of view as the moment of expiration arrives, sharing with us a vision of a blinding white light as the furry comandante slips into Commie heaven. Say hi to the Rosenbergs for me! Fidel says, "See ya soon."

-Kyle Smith, New York Post

You know that guy in the beret on all those T-shirts? Yeah, that's communist revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara, and in this movie you get to see him (or rather, Benicio Del Toro) running around in the woods with guns for four and a half hours. Yes, that's right five hours if you count intermission...

Steven Soderbergh's movie takes no stand except by omission. Rather infuriatingly, he completely skips over the most controversial era in Guevara's life—when he was in power...

While Soderbergh clearly made the movie he wanted to make, rather than the one we might have liked to see, shouldn't there have been time in all these hours to cover the controversial aspects just a little bit more?

-Luke Y. Thompson, E! Online

Posted by Henry Louis Gomez at December 15, 2008 11:17 PM

Comments

Posted by: j2tharome at December 16, 2008 12:24 AM

Posted by: Rayarena at December 16, 2008 07:42 AM

Posted by: Dave Sandoval at December 16, 2008 07:59 AM