An awesome and ridiculous film that leaves you thrilled beyond the point of your natural endurance
2012
Theatre
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Music
The British pop music industry may be eating itself but if Muse are the pick of what it can offer the world in 2010 then British music is in rude health indeed
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Always been a fan but never seen them live. I was ecstatic to be part of this epic event. WOW!
London,
Derek Malcolm's rating
Reader rating
Dir: Steven Soderbergh.
Cast: Benicio Del Toro, Santiago Cabrera, Rodrigo Santoro, Demian Bichir, Kahlil Mendez
Description: The second two hours of Steven Soderbergh's ambitious history lesson focuses on the increasingly isolated Ernesto Guevara as he leads the charge of Fidel Castro and his guerrilla army to overthrow Fulgencio Batista. The film examines Che's relationships with Alieda March and Tania, and his ultimate fate at the hands of the relentless Bolivian military.
Country: FR/SP/US. 2008. 127mins
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.
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