Critic Reviews
64
Metascore
Generally Favorable
positive
15(63%)
mixed
7(29%)
negative
2(8%)
Showing 24 Critic Reviews
91
In both halves, Soderbergh emphasizes observation over ideology with an eye toward the mundane details of life on the front lines of a revolution.
88
Che looks dazzling, whether the camera is weaving through a battle or trying to bore into Che's haunted soul. Del Toro stands up to Soderbergh's relentless scrutiny. As for the movie, it's a reward to audiences eager to break from the play-it-safe pack. Game on.
88
Benicio Del Toro, one of the film's producers, gives a heroic performance, not least because it's self-effacing.
88
The labor applied to Che is apparent, but it would be wrong to characterize the movie as laborious the way it was in, say, 2006's "The Good German," where Soderbergh took great pains to re-create 1940s Hollywood wartime glamour.
83
It's all about Guevara's education as a revolutionary and his development as a leader in the jungles and in battle.
83
Leaving aside politics, it's quite an achievement in art.
80
Every Bolivian sequence has its Cuban parallel, which is why Che's two parts are best seen together. Guerrilla may be the more realized of the two--and could certainly stand on its own--but it is only comprehensible in the light of The Argentine. Elevating Guerrilla to tragedy, The Argentine puts some hope in hopelessness--and even in history.
75
What this slow-moving but fascinating two-part portrait does do is hunker down in the jungles and mountains of Cuba and (in the second part) Bolivia, capturing in keen, almost Zen-like detail the trudging and trekking, the recruiting and strategizing, the fighting and the philosophizing.
75
Che is Soderbergh's most interesting film in years, defiantly eccentric and absorbing at its best.
70
If this earnest, two-part biopic with a total running time of 268 minutes sometimes lacks cinematic flair, the straight-ahead, chronologically-driven film will inform and, to a somewhat lesser extent, excite viewers everywhere.
