Che Part Two (15)
LESS than two months after the premiere of Part One, Benicio Del Toro is back as the guerilla leader Ernesto Che Guevara.
This time he’s quitting Cuba and heading to Bolivia to repeat his earlier trick of using violence to improve public services. Unfortunately, the asthmatic runs out of steam and ends up being shot.
Lacking the infusion of the scenes from the United Nations in Part One, the second half of director Steven Soderbergh’s story plods through more woodland with Che (Benicio Del Toro) needing to learn more names of a cast unable to make much of a mark in character. Right down to the starkness of the shooting, Part Two is very much an echo of Part One, though after the drama of the firing squad the seemingly inexhaustible Soderbergh still has it in him to find a rather more cinematic take on Guevera’s demise. With a running time of 127 minutes adding an extra couple of minutes on Part One, the total length of both movies is four hours and 12 minutes – or ten minutes more than Branagh’s Hamlet.
I know which I’d rather sit through.
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