"Che" in the UK.

By David Hudson on 01/02/2009

Steven Soderbergh's "Che" will be rolling out in wide release in the US next week; today, though, see the release of "Part One" in the UK (followed by "Part Two" on February 20). "For my money, 'Che' is an impressive and intelligent work that knows exactly what it wants to achieve and does it with daring vigor," writes Dave Calhoun, introducing his interview with Benicio Del Toro for Time Out London. "[Y]ou should try to see both parts in one go," argues Geoff Andrew: "only then do the true audacity and intelligence and the sheer formal elegance of the work become apparent."

"For all its severity and reserve, Soderbergh's 'Che' is an adventure," writes the Guardian's Peter Bradshaw: "massively serious and ambitious. It certainly underlines the filmmaker's determination to maintain an absence of auteur identity: the director who made the 'Ocean's Eleven' movies and the remake of 'Solaris' has come up with something very different from either. It is far from being a biopic, more a cinematic extrapolation of Che's iconic status, and by that token it may exasperate some. Others will be engrossed by this flawed, sprawling, intriguing movie."

"Soderbergh isn't interested in grand revelations about the Latin revolutionary hero Che Guevara, in potted psychology, in Che's controversial stature, or even in fitting his life into a two-part, four-hour-plus viewing marathon," writes Tim Robey in the Telegraph: "[T]his film is a landscape, in its very bones. It's rangy and contemplative, a war picture about attrition, made with a painstaking fidelity to the factual record of Che's achievements, or those it chooses to tackle."

"This is no flowing, David Lean-style historical epic, more an agitated, non-linear scrapbook of facts and fleeting glimpses of the man who became a revolutionary icon," writes Wendy Ide in the London Times. "As Che, Benicio Del Toro does sterling work...; the fact that we never really get a glimpse of the flawed man behind the legend is the fault of the screenplay rather than any problem with Del Toro's performance."

"[T]his film plays not so much as a portrait of the man as a history of the Cuban Revolution," writes Anthony Quinn in the Independent, where Leonard Doyle looks back on "50 years of Castro."

[Photo: "Che," IFC Films, 2008]

Tags: Benicio Del Toro, Che, Steven Soderbergh