Che!

Plot synopsis:
=== Part 1: The Argentine ===
In Havana 1964, Che Guevara is interviewed by Lisa Howard who asks him if reform throughout Latin America might not blunt the "message of the Cuban Revolution."
In 1955, at a gathering in Mexico City, Guevara first meets Fidel Castro. He listens to Castro’s plans and signs on as a member of the July 26th Movement.
There is a return to 1964 for Guevara’s address before the United Nations General Assembly in New York City, where he makes an impassioned speech against American imperialism, and defends the executions his regime has committed, declaring "this is a battle to the death."
March 1957. Guevara deals with debilitating bouts of asthma as his group of revolutionaries meet up with Castro’s. Together, they attack an army barracks in the Sierra Maestra on May 28, 1957.
On October 15, 1958, the guerrillas approach the town of Las Villas. The Battle of Santa Clara is depicted with Guevara demonstrating his tactical skill as the guerrillas engage in street-to-street fighting and derail a train carrying Cuban soldiers and armaments. Near the film‘s end, they are victorious. With the Cuban Revolution now over, Guevara heads to Havana, remarking "we won the war, the revolution starts now."
=== Part 2: Guerrilla ===
The second part begins on November 3, 1966 with Guevara arriving in Bolivia disguised as a middle-aged representative of the Organization of American States hailing from Uruguay, who subsequently drives into the mountains to meet his men. The film is organized by the number of days that he was in the country. On Day 26, there is solidarity among Guevara's men despite his status as foreigner. By Day 67, Guevara has been set up for betrayal. He tries to recruit some peasants only to be mistaken for a cocaine smuggler. On Day 100, there is a shortage of food and Guevara exercises discipline to resolve conflicts between his Cuban and Bolivian followers.
By Day 113, some of the guerrillas have deserted and the Bolivian Army has discovered their base camp. Much to Che's disappointment Tamara "Tania" Bunke, Guevara's revolutionary contact, has botched elaborate preparations and given away their identity. On Day 141, the guerrillas capture Bolivian soldiers that refuse to join the revolution and are free to return to their villages. CIA advisers arrive to supervise anti-insurgent activity and training. On Day 169, Guevara's visiting friend, the French intellectual Régis Debray, is captured at Muyupampa by the Bolivian Army, which launches an aerial attack on Day 219.
Guevara grows sick and by Day 280 can barely breathe as a result of his acute asthma. On Day 302, the Bolivian Army kills Tania Bunke, Juan Acuña Ñunez, and several others in Che's forces in an ambush as they attempt to cross the Vado del Yeso after a local informant tells the Bolivian troops about the movements of the rebels. By Day 340, Guevara is trapped by the Bolivian Army in the Yuro Ravine near the village of La Higuera. Che is wounded and captured. The next day, a helicopter lands and a Cuban American CIA agent Félix Rodríguez emerges. The Bolivian high command are then phoned and give approval for Guevara's execution. He is shot on 9 October 1967, and his corpse lashed to a helicopter's landing skids and flown out.
In a final flashback scene, Guevara is aboard the Granma in 1956, looking out over the ocean. He sees the Castro brothers alone at the bow of the ship; Fidel is talking and Raúl is taking notes. Guevara hands a peeled orange to one of his comrades and returns his gaze to the lone brothers before the scene fades to black.

Tags: melodrama, violence, avant garde, murder, flashback

Review:
A few months ago I saw the highly acclaimed docudrama on Fidel on Showtime, and this film, while not as good as the Showtime drama, is not all that much worse either.First the bad stuff.
Jack Palance's portrayal of Fidel Castro must rank as one of the worst performances ever to appear on screen.
no matter what, I highly suggest you first pick up and read a good book about the man, Fidel Castro, and the Cuban revolution itself.
The movie starts with the rebel invasion of Cuba, without giving us any idea about what Che had been doing up to that point of time.
(How can we understand the rebels if we don't know what they are fighting against?) The movie continues to be confusing by subsequently not making it clear just how the rebels were able to build in force after being almost completely wiped out...
And with Richard Fleischer at the helm - a director who was usually only as good as his script - the movie sinks deeper into badness.
Reports at the time of filming state that Palance asked that Castro's "buffoonery" in the script be changed.
Given the times, any depiction of Guevara and Fidel Castro showing them as human was a bold move.
Naturally, Castro's role will be a secondary one, a decision Castro's supporters seem unable to forgive.Everyone knows how the story ends, and that is where the movie starts, with Che Guevara's body being transported by helicopter down from the one-room schoolhouse where he was apparently executed after being wounded and captured by an elite unit of the Bolivian Army.
Some of the Comrades, visibly aged, give their interviews from prison cells.While Guevara's early life in Argentina isn't depicted, there is a soundless, striking scene early in the film of Cuban women protesting the dictatorial Battista regime, only to be massacred by Cuban soldiers ("We heard you calling, Cuba and we came...") that well explains what motivated young Ernesto and other youths from Latin America's upper classes to join the Cuban revolutionaries.
From there we trace Che's transformation from idealistic medical graduate to hardened guerrilla fighter--summed up in a moment when in the heat of battle he picks up a rifle and leaves his doctor's kit on the ground.I also disagree with the many criticisms of the portrayal of Fidel Castro by Jack Palance.
Omar Sharif brilliant as Che Guevara, Jack Palance less brilliant as Castro but good enough..
Omar Sharif as Che makes a convincing character of great controversy and self-contradictoriness, while it is possible at the same time to understand him - why he abandoned the Castro regime as a hopeless case of either becoming a puppet of Russia or of America, to try to make an inter-South-American revolution of his own.
Of course, it was utterly unrealistic, which he failed to realize, having no detachment but rather an obsession with any revolution at any cost.Jack Palance has been criticized for his almost caricature of Castro, but he has made the best of it, Castro was actually like that, and Palance has studied him carefully.There is nothing wrong with the film as film either.
The quality has its flaws, but the direction and cinematic realization is practically flawless.The greatest credit of the film, though, is the unmasking of Che as the tragic megalomaniac he was, a sick man gone wrong from the beginning and getting stuck in a vicious circle of violence going irrevocably from bad to worse, his pride outgrowing him into arrogance and inhumanity leading only one way into self-destruction, a man obsessed with constantly worsening his own tragedy, made clear enough by Omar Sharif.In brief, an underrated film of great documentary objectivity charting the psychology of man at his most destructive..
How could this movie work as a factual representation or artistic vision?1) it comes at the height of an anti-Castro obsession this country had and in many ways, still does (see, the US liked the harshly oppressive Cuban Government that preceded Castro, because we were allowed to profit from it's fascism).
The very tagline of the movie shows one of it's main objectives - to paint Castro or at least his economic model as cartoonish villainy.2) The Hollywood of the time not wanting to go to the risk of having actual Cubans or even people of closely related nationalities in the leading roles, we have very American leading men doing laughable Cuban impressions.
Jack Palance as Fidel Castro?
If you're looking for an accurate portrayal of Che Guevara, the Cuban revolutionary who helped aid Fidel Castro in his bid for power, you'd better read up on Cuban history or even type in his name on a search engine (you ARE on the Internet, after all).But whatever you do, DO NOT WATCH "CHE!".
Unless, of course, you just want a good laugh.All the reviewers of the time (and moviegoers) gave "Che!" their vote for worst film of the decade.
With more than it's fair share of wooden acting 'Che!' seems doomed from the word go.Omar Shariff attempts to breathe life into his overtly asthmatic portrayal of the revolutionary icon, Ernesto Che Guevaro, but is held back by the sheer lack of factual references.
Jack Palance portrays Fidel Castro, in a manner that could almost have been written by the US government, as a man not able to fully think things through for himself.
The film portrays the July 26th movement as an inept band of unwashed desperados who want to take over Cuba, but with only sheer luck, & government ineptitude, helping them to ultimately win through.Covering the period of time from Che's first arrival on Cuban soil in 1956 until his Bolivian death in 1967, 'Che!' struggles with both poor screenplay and locations, but still trys to maintain a sense of purpose throughout.
Constant monologues, as a means to link scenes, prove to be more irritating than useful, and you find yourself wishing for the what little action there is to resume.The film truly dies when Guevara leaves Cuba for Bolivia, with Shariff becoming more asthmatic and psychotic by the minute, until his ultimate capture in the mountains and his eventual murder in the backroom of La Higuera's village schoolhouse.Any half decent film director would probably relish the chance to make a bio-pic of the legend that is Che Guevara.
is a bad movie and deserves it reputation as an unintentionally funny film.
It takes a serious subject and presents it like the Cliff Notes version or Classic Comics because there isn't much emotion or a proper narrative--just episodic segments stitched together with mostly stupid "true stories" relayed by a variety of yutzes.This is a deservedly derided film, as it is poorly written and acted.
Again and again, the film abounds with great lines such as when Fidel implores Che "Cuba needs you....I NEED YOU!!".
Superficial biographical flick about international revolutionary and Castro's second in command Che Guevara, Omar Sharif.
The movie gives you the impression that if it wasn't for Che Fidel Castro, Jack Palance, would never have taken over Cuba in what's called the Great Peasant Revolution of 1959.
Che, an Argentinian doctor and one-world revolutionary, did in fact land with Castro and his contingent of 82 men off the west coast of Cuba on December 2, 1956.After being ambushed by Batista's, the Cuban dictator, men only a dozen, including Che & Castro, survived.
This left a victorious Castro & Co. to enter the capital city without as much as a shot being fired on New Years Day.The movie shows how Che became a ruthless and blood-thirsty disciplinarian to the troops.
Che as a command-ante is shown without as much as flinching ordering the execution of traitors, many times in the movie doing it himself, that even his leader Fidel didn't have the heart to do.
After the Castro take-over of Cuba Che held around the clock military trials and executions of former Batista political and military personal.
This would result in many innocent, far more then those proved guilty by his military tribunals, people ending up being slaughtered by rampaging mindless and vengeful mobs.The movie "Che" goes on to show that it was Che who gave Fidel Castro the idea of not only declaring himself a Marxist which outraged the United States Government and turned it against him but in establishing diplomatic and military relations with the Soviet Union.
This irresponsible action, on Castro and the USSR's part, almost brought the world to the brink of nuclear war in the autumn of 1962.Feeling betrayed by his friend Fidel and his Soviet allies for backing down to the US during the Cuban Missile Crisis Che, calling Castro a Soviet dupe, decided to leave the safety of Cuba and go out in the dangerous hills and valleys of Bolivia to start a revolution of his own.
Since in reality Che left for Bolivia in late 1966 or early 1967 the event, in the movie, of Che's break with Castro,in 1962, seems a bit premature.In Bolivia Che lost his revolutionary persona as well as his ability to rally peasants, like he did in Cuba ten years earlier, to his aid.
Going against his own writings and principles about how a guerrilla/revolutionary war should be fought had Che's men, mostly Bolivian rebels, desert him because of his mindless and brutal tactics to whip up both support and recruits among the peasant population.The hard life as a guerrilla fighter coupled with his deteriorating asthmatic condition, smoking Cuban cigars didn't help Che's asthma either, took a heavy toll on Che's health.
Fate eventually caught up with Che as well as the Bolivian army and on October 9, 1967 in an ambush at the Quebrada del Yuro ravine the life-long revolutionary was shot and captured.
Omar Sharif in many of the battle and strenuous jungle mountain climbing scenes in the movie is heard breathing and wheezing, because of his asthma condition, like someone making an obscene phone-call.
The final scene when Che's confronted by an elderly Bolivian peasant berating him about how his guerrilla actions in and around his village have caused his goats to cease from giving milk.
The scene looks like something straight out of a Mystery Science 3000 parody of an unintentionally and hilariously funny movie.
Jack Palance as Fidel Castro with his fake plastic nose and acting as if he'd be lost without Che makes the guy, Castro, look like a totally helpless dolt as well as alcoholic buffoon.
Castro who seems to drink as many bottles of booze as the cigars that he smokes that it's a wonder that he's still around now; some forty after Che left him to run Cuba on his own!
It wasn't until after word of mouth, as well as critics reviews, about how awful the film really was that it was decided that "Che" instead of ingratiating Castro's Cuba was in fact the United States revenge for it's defeat by Castro's army and militia at "the Bay of Pigs"!.
Here's a list of the great things Che did for Cuba 1) Executed thousands of innocent Cuban Men, Women, AND CHILDREN to satisfy his lust for power.2) Destroyed Cuba's economy and good standing with the rest of the world.
So much for shunning the materialist life style.Cuba today is an absolutely destitute country, and you have no one but Che and the Castro brothers to thank for it.
Compare Cuban exports from 1950/60 to those of today; talk with people who survived or who had parents in the so called Cuban "revolution" of the 1960's; read all of the reports of murdered innocents; read the reports from people who served under Che and Castro and fled because of what an evil, disgusting human being he was.And please, please, always remember to read or watch EVERYTHING objectively.
While watching this movie you'll have no idea what Che and his buddies are all fighting for and what they want to achieve, if you know nothing to little about Che Guevara and the Cuban revolution.
Only 2 years after Che's death, so his story was still fresh back in the minds of the audiences at time.
But this movie was already much hated back in its day, so of course there is plenty more wrong with this movie.Not only the story won't learn you anything but you also won't learn a thing about the person Che. Nothing in this movie justifies why he is globally regarded still such an icon, since the movie doesn't show anything great or heroic that he ever achieved and his personality in his movie is just very bland as well.I can't really blame Omar Sharif for it though, while many other still seem to do so.
The story is already bad to begin with by the entire way it gets told makes it all the more worse.What I also really didn't like about the storytelling was the random insertion of random people narration the events straight into the cam, as if this was a documentary.
It comes across as incredibly cheap and lame, also since often the actors just aren't the greatest ones.Even Jack Palance is real bad in his role.
He is supposed to play Fidel Castro but instead he seems more like a caricature of him.
I of course love "The A-Team" but this doesn't really seem like a compliment for a movie that tries to tell a serious, historically relevant story.Perhaps the movie is not as bad to watch as its reputation might suggest but still it's truly really far from a good movie.5/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/.
The movie grows better in the second half when Che tries to lead a guerrilla party in Bolivia.
A Bolivian Army officer calls in a village goat-herder , points towards wretched Guevara and asks the peasant : "Can't you see ?
Watching "Che!", I didn't interpret it as a particularly bad movie.
It's just that, aside from all the overacting, Omar Sharif as Che Guevara looks silly and Jack Palance as Fidel Castro always looks as if he's about to fall asleep.
In fact, Fidel adopts Che's comments as his own, just like Daffy Duck does with Porky Pig's suggestion in "Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2 Century"!
His performance is a possible career-worst(even worse than that in Outlaw of Gor), being little more than a buffoonish caricature, chewing the scenery to shreds and I am sure that Fidel Castro in real life didn't behave like this much of an idiot.The way the characters are written is never compelling and they never come over as real people either, coming over instead as caricatures with the cast attempting and failing to give them life or realism.
At the end of the day it felt like there was no point in the film being made, it tries to cover a lot but says very little and we learn next to nothing about what made Che Guevara famous and also learn just as little about him as a person as well.
Not helped by that the film while mostly one-sided didn't seem to make its mind as to whether we should feel sympathy for Guevara or not.All in all, not that dire but a miscalculated failure all the same that sees two wholly dependable actors giving very bad performances.
Some people say that the movie is idolizing Che. What?
Castro's role in the revolution is probably understated, but I suppose it had to be done or otherwise the film would never pass the censors.It seems to me that most of the reviewers saw what the critics said, and then formed their own opinions before even giving the movie a chance.
Another good picture that have bad reputation by IMDB's users,in my humble opinion because the movie show up so clear who really was Che Guevara by Sy Bartlett and David Kapp,this butcher tried made the same thing in Bolivia but there he wasn't successful with your communist ideas in a peaceful people mostly indians whom not to easy handling for the get the power....so Guevara realize in that country didn't have the same conditions to raise a true revolution,then he begining steal the own people who swore protect....this bloody killer was godlike by the reds as hero and later becames a legend for those who raise a red flag!!
What to expect of a "Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment" produced "documentary film" on Che Guevara in 1969?
Certainly not the enthusiasm millions of left wing (or pro Latin America) people around the world share for the famous revolutionary until these days, but in this special case even not a sense of objectivity.Instead, Che!
Or a Che Guevara who prefers sitting in a dark room signing death sentences instead of celebrating the revolution with the masses on the street.A fairly accurate story, mixed with poorly playing actors, and less South than rather North American perspectives on how the world should be (as an example, in one scene a Bolivian farmer talks in front of Che about the revolutionaries: "(They came) to free me?
This "judgement" pronounced by "the people" causes that Che deliberately stands up, passes the farmer and the officer to walk to his execution).If your interested in the "anti Gue perspective", watch this movie.
"Che!" clearly deserves a place all its own in any discussion of entertainingly bad movies.
I'm biased because I never bought a Che T-shirt or admired Fidel Castro.
Jack Palance is the greatest, but his portrayal of Fidel must be seen to be believed.
Omar Sharif just wheezes and gasps during all his screen time, in order to emphasize Che's real-life asthma.
Though Shariff is better looking than the real Guevara, some of his outbursts made this movie look bad.
The only cool choice on this picture is Jack Palance representation of the old Cuban jerk who messed up that island's history for five decades.Good thing his days are numbered and the old bum has quit.