If you found part one of Steven Soderbergh’s four-hour epic on Che Guevara a detailed but boring view of the Cuban revolution, part two might please you better. It’s the story of the fatal Bolivian enterprise that ended in 1967 with the imprisonment and execution of the man Sartre called “the most complete human being of our time”.

Soderbergh references Che’s meticulous diaries and, while not exactly a hagiographer, admiringly lets us know what went wrong. Watching this, you can’t help thinking quite a lot was bungled. Did Che really think that his small band of revolutionaries were capable of causing poverty-stricken Bolivians, living in fear of a military dictatorship, to rise up and support this rag-tag group of hopefuls?

In fact, the Bolivians did not, frequently sneaking on Che’s men to the authorities in the hope of favours. They clearly knew on which side their bread was buttered, even though bread was about all they ate. Added to that, Che, a chronic asthmatic, managed to leave his medicine at home and, though he nobly refused to leave any of his wounded behind, the result was a slow progression into territory nobody would want to enter even if fit.

In the first film, Che refused to admit his many mistakes as Castro’s economics supremo, and nothing was said about his abortive Congo adventures; in this one, there is no understanding of the absurdity of his Bolivian campaign.

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It’s expertly made, mind you, and features a performance from Benicio Del Toro, practically masked in whiskers, that is both brave and sincere, like the mistaken Che himself. It suggests that the man we love to adore was indeed a brave and noble man. What you can’t help thinking is that the Charge of the Light Brigade was only a mite less foolish than the expedition that got him killed.