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For months preceding the release of this movie you saw it advertised in all sorts of print media, so I patiently waited for its video release to see what all the hype was about. After it was over I had to apologize to my roommate for occupying the VCR for the last hour and a half to watch such a horrible movie. It essentially fails because it is a character based movie about unredeemable characters. With the possible exception of Amanda Peet (whose only redeemable quality is that she is Amanda Peet) you cannot stand any of them. The film relies on its dialogue which is sophomoric, moronic, and crude. The only slightly amusing character is Eric, whose portrayal of the sole married member of a group of friends is dead on. The final twist, designed to make you laugh at the three main characters, only instead inspires the same kind of resentment towards Peet. All in all, only rent if you are desperate or possess a dark sense of humor.


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This film is not funny. It is not entertaining. It does not contain one single second of originality or intelligence, nor does it lead you to take the slightest interest in the characters or situation. Added to that it's about as juvenile a movie as anything in recent memory. It's as if a group of 14 or 15 year old high school kids who had never actually met or had any type of relationship with a real girl had sat down and wrote a movie based on their incorrect fantasies about what being an adult man would be like. This movie is boring, obnoxiously mind-numbing, and at times offensive and disgusting. At most, it contains one or two moments that make you laugh. Also, it seems twice as long as its 85 minute running time.


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This movie lacked... everything: story, acting, surprise, ingenuity and a soul. Fifteen minutes in, I was staring at the screen saying, "How could all of these guys get together and consider themselves friends (even without the girl)?" Another fifteen minutes in, I was praying for as much Amanda Peet as possible. When a bad movie quietly rears it's ugly head, eye candy is a nice consolation. But there wasn't much of that! Cheated on all fronts!


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"Whipped" is 82 minutes long. This review is 82 words long. Three unlikable New York Lotharios, ruthless "scammers," end up wooing the same woman, played by Amanda Peet, with disastrous results. That applies to the story and the film. Too sophomoric to be misogynistic, flaccid and ridiculous, "Whipped" mixes the philosophies of shock jock Tom Lykis with Penthouse letter fantasies. Though technically proficient it's dated, grating, poorly written, mean, and obvious. People don't act like this. People don't talk like this. Really.


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I was looking forward to seeing Amanda Peet in another good role after recently renting "The Whole Nine Yards"--easily worth the rental, by the way--but this wasn't it.
I remembered that the trailer for "Whipped" was somewhat funny and the plot about three oversexed New Yorker twenty somethings all falling for and getting manipulated by the charming Ms. Peet was worth a shot. So, I convinced two friends one afternoon to come see this movie with me. This review is my penance.
In the first act we have the three lead studs, recounting their conquests in a diner. What should have been funny, or at least telling, comes out rather pathetic. Was there any redeeming quality about the three men and their encounters that we were supposed to get out of this?
[And while I don't mind movies that are cheerfully vulgar, I kept wondering why no one in the diner turned around when the studs talk loudly about sexual and scatalogical details. They do this every week at the same diner? You would think someone would complain. Oh, wait, I forgot: two other diners do notice in one scene. But this is just a setup for a punchline. Everyone else in the diner is deaf.]
The second act has the three studs all falling for Mia and then developing brain rot, failing to ask each other or her about what's really happening between the four of them. And I kept asking myself, as the studs keep acting like they have been, what redeeming qualities does she see in them to stick with them longer than one date? Does she start out with brain rot? I kept hoping for Eric's character, the married buddy, to become something more than simply the annoying punching bag in this act. His role is clearly to dispense advice on being married. But why do they even bother to talk to him when they won't talk to each other? And his advice? Sheeesh!
The third act resolves what plot there is but by this time I was looking at my watch. My friends told me they were still waiting for something genuinely funny to happen and I had to agree. The Scene That Explains All was adequate and managed to explain all of the questions and mysterious dialogue bits throughout the movie but we were just checking them off a list. ("Oh, okay, that's why Brad had that happen and Jonathan says this and...")
What laughs we made were from the stupidity of the plot than at anything amusing. Even the outtakes during the credits weren't very funny. Ultimately I was left with nothing except a desire to warn people away from this movie.
Rating: 3


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Bad acting. Bad writing. This was a poorly written film. It's too bad because it had some potential. It's not even close to American Pie or Something about Mary as previous comments might have you believe. Rent it at dollar night from you local video store if you're kind of bored.


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This movie will be a hit with those that enjoy sophomoronic, mindless, explicit bragging about sexual exploits and F... in almost every sentence. Like a good plot? Like comedy? Like romance or other human values? Stay away from Whipped. It was so bad I left after about half an hour. I saw two kids slip in that looked to be about 10 -- very harmful -- this deserves an X.


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I see quite a few positive reviews on this board, trying to revive this film from its lackluster status and starting a cult following. I see the usual ranting--"I guess this movie is just not for the easily offended," "This movie is not Shakespeare," etc. Guess what? Neither was "Road Trip"! And I laughed my a** off during that movie! There's a way to make a crude, tasteless comedy and deliver laughs; and there's a way to...just make it crude and tasteless. "Whipped" tries to be "Swingers" without the wit or intelligence. It seems to have been written through the puerile eyes of a 14-year-old boy. For God's sake, the characters in this movie are supposed to be white-collar, upright citizens--and they talk like some of the idiots I knew in freshman year of high school! The dialogue is laced--more like drowned--with four-letter words. You would think that people of their status would have SOME degree of intelligence--and a more extensive vocabulary. Just watch a Whit Stillman film and you'll see the difference. Not to mention the fact that the dialogue sounds totally unrealistic and downright cartoonish. If you know any successful, white-collar businessmen who speak like the characters in this movie--please let me know and introduce me to them. Their annoying sexual banter is equivalent to that of standard locker room chat among teens just arriving at puberty. There is absolutely NO insight into relationships, sex or...anything!!! It's just a poor excuse to showcase an array of extremely--and don't take the word "extremely" for granted, because I mean it with all my heart--crude gags. These are gags with no substance. Gags that are meant more for groans than laughs. The scene at the end between Amanda Peet and her girlfriends was totally un-called for and totally unconvincing. There are some movies that involve interaction among females that were written by (straight) men and play out wonderfully. This scene involves a barrage of sexual metaphors and gestures. It involves the kind of dialogue you can never imagine leaving a woman's mouth. It was one of those noticeably-written-by-a-guy scenes. I wasn't believing it for a second.
"Whipped" is purely a sick male fantasy that's as flat as it is annoying. I got (very) few laughs out of this utterly forgettable comedy, and those were probably a result of desperation. When you're not laughing for a long period of time, you desperately look for humor in the most trivial things. So I wouldn't mark that down as a positive.


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BEGIN SPOILER: Fitfully funny and memorable for Mr. Chong's literal roach-smoking scene: Chong coolly mashes a stray kitchen cockroach into his pipe's bowl, lights up, coughs and hacks violently for a seeming eternity,then with perfect aplomb and not skipping a beat, re-loads the bowl properly, re-lights, re-tokes. END SPOILER. Alas, I began to lose faith less than half-way through the proceedings. It occurred to me that the lackadaisical duo are way obnoxious and less than relatable. I have come to appreciate the relative sophistication of contemporary stoners, Harold and Kumar. I simply prefer brighter company. Yet, the movie is probably a perfect fit for baked frat bros or those viewers who are so feeble-minded as to be outwitted by a stoner when they-- the former are sober. Notable guest appearance by Paul Reubens spouting obscenities in pre-Pee-wee form.


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One of those el cheapo action adventures of the early 1980s that used to fill video rental stores solely to be taken out by adolescent boys in the hope of a cheap thrill.
Woeful down market attempt to cash in on the Death Wish phenomenon by substituting a moderately attractive woman for the visually challenging Bronson. Acting is terrible, sets are cheap, the baddies are, well, bad. Identification with any of the characters is unlikely.
Only redeeming feature is modest amount of gratuitous female nudity, a smattering of which is full frontal. Other than that, you can leave it...


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An apparent vanity project for Karin Mani (who?), as a hottie Charles Bronson going around wiping up the 'scum' that mugged her parents, or grandparents or something, and impressing young hunks with her karate skills. In a pivotal scene she intervenes to stop a rape and a moron cop throws HER in jail, so after a couple cool shower scenes and some abortive prison-dyke seduction she has to take the law into her own hands blah blah blah. I guess there were a lot of movies like this? The script is dumber than usual if you can believe that. Mani comes off as exactly the kind of showbiz type that would co-produce her own Death Wish starring role, and I find that type sporadically endearing, but the movie is an ungainly apparatus. Competent actors would be wasted on the scumbag roles here, and would actively undermine the fantastic mincing-incompetent DA and a judge that has got to be the producer's uncle.


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Mary Pickford becomes the chieftain of a Scottish clan after the death of her father, and then has a romance. As fellow commenter Snow Leopard said, the film is rather episodic to begin. Some of it is amusing, such as Pickford whipping her clansmen to church, while some of it is just there. All in all, the story is weak, especially the recycled, contrived romance plot-line and its climax. The transfer is so dark it's difficult to appreciate the scenery, but even accounting for that, this doesn't appear to be director Maurice Tourneur's best work. Pickford and Tourneur collaborated once more in the somewhat more accessible 'The Poor Little Rich Girl,' typecasting Pickford as a child character.


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A routine mystery/thriller concerning a killer that lurks in the swamps. During the early days of television, this one was shown so often, when Dad would say "What's on TV tonight?" and we'd tell him "Strangler of the Swamp" he'd pack us off to the movies. We went to the movies a lot in those days!


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Without question one of the most embarrassing productions of the 1970s, GAOTS seems to really, REALLY want to be something important. The tragic truth is that it's so entirely valueless on every level that one can't help but laugh. Reaching in desperation for the earthy elements of Ingmar Bergman's films, it follows a city couple's day in the wilderness...they walk along a shady path, allthewhile pontificating like a U.C. Berkeley coffee clatch. Almost every line of tarradiddle dialog delivered here is uproariously bad("I feel that life itself is made up of as many tiny compartments as this pomegranate....but is it as beautiful?") After what seems like an eternity of absolutely nothing happening(well...OK...we are treated to some nudity and a tepid soft sex scene), there is finally a VERY anticlimactic confrontation involving a pair 'Nam vets who are making the nature scene and performing some pretty harsh folk ballads with an acoustic guitar.
Nothing at all eventful or interesting happens IN THIS ENTIRE FILM. I thought the Larry Buchanan picture "Strawberries Need Rain" was a weak example of a Bergman homage. "Golden Apples" is every bit as bad, but the ceaseless random verbiage it presents makes it memorably awful. 1/10


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I used to review videos for Joe Bob Briggs' legendary "We Are The Weird" newsletter. I saw a lot of stinkers, but this by far was the worst, and the years have not been kind - it remains the most indecent crime against cinema I have ever witnessed. Don't get me wrong - CAGED TERROR is nominally more technically competent than, say, MONSTER-A-GO-GO or THE GUY FROM HARLEM or something of that ilk. What solidifies its claim as Worst Movie Of All Time for me is its unique blend of bare proficiency with crippling pretension. Is it a Vietnam commentary? An ecological protest? An incitement to race riot? A study of man's inhumanity to man? A novel exercise in padding nature footage out to (nearly) feature length? In short: a hep young urban professional (possibly the most loathesome screen character ever) somehow seduces a nubile Asian-American associate into camping in the woods with him. After brow-beating her with quasi-philosophical clap for the better part of an hour, they run across two wandering veterans, the unforgettable Jarvis (a righteous brother) and the Troubadour (guitar-toting Manson Family reject). Hey, a plot twist! Tension! Action! Suspense! Well, no, just a climactic getting-locked-in-a-makeshift-wire-chicken-coop-and-lightly-belittled scene. The victim in question stares listlessly at the captors and mutters, "No... no... please... don't..." Meanwhile, Jarvis addresses the Troubadour as "Trouby" once every two minutes, bringing to mind nothing so much as the alien star of Juan Picquer's POD PEOPLE. That's about all that happens in CAGED TERROR, and such a synopsis perhaps makes it seem almost tolerable. But trust me, I've seen thousands of movies in my life, and this one has remained, for the past eight years since I first saw it, the absolute worst. (I pop it in the old VCR once every two years or so just to reassure myself, and reassure myself I certainly do.) I think the element which makes CAGED TERROR so particularly hateful is this: very little happens, and although what little does happen happens quite poorly and quite slowly, what truly makes it compulsively unwatchable is the suffocating sense that the filmmakers REALLY, REALLY WANT to shove some kind of message down your throat. But because CAGED TERROR is so incompetent and ineffectual, what was intended as a civics lesson becomes a crash course in intense viewing discomfort. This film is 75 minutes long and feels like three and a half hours. It's terrible, truly truly terrible. Folks, trust me, I saw GHOSTS THAT STILL WALK and this one is worse. Go see it! You'll thank me. And curse me. Just for the record, my favorite line: (In CAGED TERROR but perhaps EVER) "Yeah, well, you probably think the Song of Solomon was an allegory for Christ's love for the church...!" (NOTE: Must be delivered in a tone of concerted condecension.)


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This film turned up on local TV here in South Africa recently and I thought that I'd warn even those who enjoy watching B grade bad movies (which I do)that this is not even amusing. The plot concerns a couple visiting a house in the country. Some strangers appear and .... The problem is that most of the film, obviously shot in the early seventies, consists of extreme wide shots of people walking, in real time and awfully slowly, from A to B. This makes the film tedious in the extreme and the expected blood and gore payoff just never happens. I am really curious - how many people have actually watched this from beginning to end?


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When I was in school I made a film about a couple roaming around in the trees and talking, and I realized halfway through editing that this was not just a failing aesthetic strategy but a cliché of Canadian cinema: sodden lyricism married to vacant, metaphor-burdened stabs at social commentary. But whatever my own film's failings I feel much better after seeing this...this...thing. For one thing, mine ran 20 minutes, not 85, and had more content at that: every pointless bit of business here is fawned over for four, five, six relentless minutes. The male lead is just incredible, a brow-beating, loudmouthed creep given to outbursts of drama-class improv in between philosophical insights culled from the U of T pub, and he is given lots and lots of space to make us hate him. Admittedly if he weren't such an a**hole then the third act would make even less sense, as a couple snarky dudes show up to provide distant and thoroughly unhelpful echoes of 'exploitation' values; but it doesn't make it any easier to watch the caged creep whimper "please" in closeup until the magazine runs out. I take back what I said about AUTUMN BORN, which at least had the courage of its own misbegotten lechery: this cinematic crater is and will remain the very worst Canadian movie of all time. At least, I really really hope so.


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I saw this movie a couple years back. I could'nt sleep and there was nothing on. So I peeped it. What really gets me is it makes no sense and thats why its disturbing. Richard gets tied up in chicken wire and Jarvis starts making out with Richard's girl while she's unconscious. Then Jarvis's buddy Troubador is playing some stupid song on his guitar. By the next morning it shows Richard's girl talking to Jarvis and Trouby and then she walks back to Richard and looks at him while he's still tied up. Then they play some happy music and the movie is finished. I mean what happened? Did they brake up? And what was she saying to those 2 guys(Trouby and Jarvis)? Its to puzzling and to poor to. I can't stand movies that are disturbing and don't make sense. This was the worst film i've ever seen since the 90's version of Lord of the Flies.


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Basing a television series on a popular author's works is no guarantee of success. Yorkshire Television learnt this the hard way when in 1979 they bought the rights to the books credited to Dick Francis, three of which were broadcast under the collective title 'The Racing Game'. Mike Gwilym was Sid Halley, a former jockey turned private eye following an accident in which he lost his right hand, only to have it replaced by an artificial one. Gwilym suffered from an acute lack of charisma ( and looked like one of the bad guys ) while Mick Ford ( who played the irritating Chico Barnes ) made me think of a horse's arse whenever he was on screen. For six weeks, this less-than dynamic duo charged about the countryside, foiling nefarious plots to fix races, usually by the same methods - blackmail, kidnapping riders or doping horses. Yorkshire Television threw money at the show, but to no avail. Violent, sexist, far-fetched and repetitious, it was quickly carted off to the knackers yard.


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The one reason I remember this is that it was shown the week after Nigel Kneale`s brilliant QUATERMASS serial was broadcast . The trailers made heavy emphasis that the main character had a mutilated arm which had me hoping he`d be like Victor Caroon from THE QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT stalking the streets of London .
No such luck because THE RACING GAME is just a rather drab thriller with the gimmick of having a hero with a physical disability trying to get to the bottom of investigations of corrupt horse racing . I suppose if you`re a fan of Dick Francis you might enjoy it but setting it in the context of the late 70s when THE SWEENEY had just finished and THE PROFESSIONALS was still being produced , there`s something lacking about THE RACING GAME . One trailer featured a car over taking another on a motor way , if it`d been a trailer for THE SWEENEY you`d see Jack Regan over taking a car and beating a confession out of the slags who`d done a blag while THE PROFESSIONALS would have over taken a car and blown away the terrorists inside . I think that sums up what`s wrong with this series


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'The Fox and the Child' is the new film by French director Luc Jacquet, who brought us the Oscar-winning documentary 'March of the Penguins.' It focuses around a young girl (wonderfully played by Bertille Noël-Bruneau) and her blooming friendship with a fox.
There are some truly mesmerizing moments here; badgers mucking about, a lynx chasing the fox through a snow-littered forest; one scene in particular when the fox is being tormented by a pack of wolves is quite intense and even frightening at times. However, there's simply not quite enough of them.
Beautifully shot; the cinematography is dazzling. The bubbly kind of look of the film is wonderful. It's undeniably a very lush production.
The English version is narrated by Kate Winslet, but what little dialogue there already is has been very poorly dubbed. The score is also far too fluffy, or at least it is for my liking; and the screenplay, while subtle, seemingly jumps from one scenario to another, ultimately leaving me almost baffled.
While there's a nice moral at the heart of the film, and the rather quiet performance from Noël-Bruneau is quite lovely, the real star is the fox. Those captivating moments focusing solely around our furry little friend are tremendous. However, again, there's simply not nearly enough of them.
- To keep up to date with all the latest in film, including reviews, news, discussions and more, be sure to visit www.mybluray.com.au


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This film has little to recommend it, though that little being the breathtaking scenery, cinematography and direction of wildlife, it is difficult to bring up its weak points in the company of such rave reviews. It is precisely these things, however, that make the lack of a satisfactory plot and its execution so disappointing.
I watched this with my children and none of us was too impressed by the end. Yes, the pictures were great, the broad landscapes across the forest and mountains magnificent, but what was going on in the foreground? The rather dull narration of the stupidity of an insipid girl who learns all too slowly a very basic lesson about befriending wildlife - and gets off quite easily given the track record of that sort of thing. It is certainly not a new story, in fact there is nothing remotely novel about the way it is told, and we have all seen this before, and, indeed, much more eloquently by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
The only thing really to be gleaned from this film is a sense of how to work with these wonderful lenses and forest lighting; the rest is a waste of time.


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At the beginning of the movie, the beautiful photography and the scenes of the fox were amazing. However, the story was so very slow and boring. And then the little girl begins to domesticate the fox, which leads to tragic events. We live in the forest, and frequently see foxes. One thing anyone should know is that you leave wild animals to be wild, and enjoy them from afar. This movie sets a terrible example to the children who will be watching it, in trying to make a wild creature into a pet. I do not know what the point of the story was supposed to be. Even after the terrible events with the main fox, the little girl was still wanting to play with the kits. Does she never learn her lesson? And there are other scenes featuring predator animals to the fox, which only adds to the trauma inflicted on children watching this movie. What a disappointment this movie was. And what a horrible story it tells. The final narrated dialog was so stupid, by which time my wife and I were screaming at the TV! I absolutely hated this movie, and would never recommend it to anyone!


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I went to see this movie with the most positive expectations. I had seen Jacquet's previous movie (march of the penguins) and had heard a very positive review of this one on the radio. However, I was severely disappointed. Most of all, this movie is terribly boring. Literally NOTHING happens. I tried to describe the content of the movie to a friend, and we both ended up laughing because I could only stammer things like "well then the winter comes, and then spring, and then there's an eagle, and a river, and one time it is dark, and the girl goes into a cave, and another time the fox has babies" and so on. After about half an hour I began sighing, yawning, rolling my eyes, cursing the reviewer at the radio station, and hoping that it would be over soon. But the movie went on and on. When it finally ended I had sunken so deep into my chair that I must have looked somewhat similar to Stephen Hawking. The most annoying parts of the movie are (a) The girl, who is obviously there to give children someone to identify with. She wears the same clothes throughout the entire movie (one year), and shows exactly two facial expressions: Joy and Seriousness. She is cute, no question about that. However, a movie about the beauty of nature like this one would have done better without her all-too-human presence. I found myself constantly hoping that she might get eaten by a bear, drown in the river, or something similarly terrible. (b) The commentary by the girl's adult voice, which tells us nothing but negligible, obvious, boring, redundant things. (c) The music, which is desperately lacking subtlety. When the girl is happily jumping around, the music jumps around, too. When the fox is threatened by an eagle, the music becomes threatening, too. It reminded me of the very early days of film-making, and was just too predictable to enjoy. Admittedly, many of the children who saw the movie with me did obviously like it, at least they got somehow involved. Thus, my warning concerns adults only: If you are over ten years old, avoid this movie. You can get a better (and cheaper) sleep in most other places.


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What an unusual movie.
Absolutely no concessions are made to "Hollywood special effects" or entertainment. There is no background music, not special effects or enhanced sound.
Facial expressions are usually covered by thick beards and the Spanish language is a strange monotonic lilt that sounds the same whether in the midst of a battle or talking around a campfire.
I sort of viewed these movies (parts 1 and 2) as an educational experience, not really something to go and get entertained by. Its quite long and in places dull.
But I suspect that given the lack of any plot development, I don't think its very educational either.
Its also difficult to perceive any story from the movie dialogue - it would be a good idea to read up a little on the history so that you can understand the context of what is happening, since for some reason the director didn't see fit to inform the audience why Che's band was moving around the way they did - as a result there seem to be groups skulking around the woodland for no particular reason and getting shot at.
I would have loved to give this movie more stars for somehow generating more empathy with me and developing depth of character, but somehow all of the characters were still strangers to me at the end. The stars it gets are for realism and showing the hardships of guerrilla warfare.


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STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning
This second instalment of the Che films moves the story forward to the late 60s, where the man has now moved his resistance fighters into the hills of South America, surviving without enough food and water and with tensions mounting between the group. Everything comes to a head when he crosses the border into Bolivia and the government forces step up their campaign to bring him down.
Without the flitting between time and places of the last film, Soderbergh's second instalment focuses solely on the action in the hills, and manages to be an even duller experience. And more pretentiously, the score has been drowned out, giving the second instalment more of an unwelcome air of artsieness that proves just as alienating. There's just an unshakeable air of boredom to the film that never lets up. You can't fault Soderbergh's ambition or Del Toro's drive in the lead role, it's just a shame that somewhere in the production things managed to take such a disappointing turn. **


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Same old same old about Che. It completely ignored the really interesting facts of Che's true character. Sodeberg redid the same boring narrative of Che. The silly seductive tale of an Argentinean rich-boy who was so shocked by poverty he became a Robin Hood fighting alongside the poor, until eventually he was murdered by the CIA. Yeah, yeah, heard it all before, BORING AND UNTRUE!. The reality of Che Guevara is very different and far more explosive! The facts show that he was a totalitarian with a messiah streak, who openly wanted to impose Maoist tyranny on the world. He was so fanatical that at the hottest moment in the Cold War, he even begged the Soviet Union to nuke New York, Washington or Los Angeles and bring about the end of the world. CHe urged Khrushchev to launch a nuclear strike against US cities. For the rest of his life, he declared that if his finger had been on the button, he would have pushed it. When Khrushchev backed down and literally saved the world, Che was furious at the "betrayal". If Che's recommendations had been followed, you would not be reading this review now. How a homicidal maniac became a pop icon would have made a much more interesting film. Incredible that no filmmaker has been daring enough to show the real side of Che and his posthumous media transformation. THAT WOULD MAKE AN Oscar WINNING FILM! I thought making independent film meant taking REAL RISKS and being GROUNDBRAKING! They only stick to "safe counterculture themes", to wit, "Che cool", "Wall Street bad", "Republican= Nazi", "Bush ex Hitler", "NRA is worse than KGB", "Christians are fanatics and stupid", etc...ad nauseum. Oooh, how daring, how mind blowing. Tres anti-mainstream and edgy. I wish they would have some real cojones and tackle the Independent Film Oligarchy! That would be truly daring!


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The second half of Steven Soderbergh's revolutionary bio on Che Guevara deals with his last campaign to export revolution to Bolivia. In order to maintain his saintly visage of Che Soderbergh conveniently leap frogs the mass executions he presided over after the revolution in Cuba and the folly of his Congo adventure ("This is the history of a failure" he writes in the preface of his Congo Journal) to concentrate fully on Che's attempt to rally support to rise up against the government in Bolivia. It would turn out to be a disaster and Guevara's final act.
What plagued the first chapter follows suit here as Soderbergh slows his film to a crawl to study the beatific countenance of the contemplative Guevara once again being played like James Dean in East of Eden by Bernicio Del Toro. The problem is Guevara has little success in gaining converts and he soon finds himself and his starving comrades being swallowed up in the heart of darkness Bolivian Jungle. Unlike Werner Herzog in the magnificent, Aguirre, the Wrath of God Soderbergh fails to utilize the jungle's metaphorical possibilities to heighten the desperation of the guerrillas. He seems more concerned with keeping Che's nimbus above his head than exploring the panic setting in on the dead enders. There is one Herzogian moment where Che sits astride an obstinate horse kicking and screaming to get it moving but overall Soderbergh's mise en scene remains flat, sloppy and uninteresting.
In both of his films Soderbergh shows he is clearly a Che groupie and because of it his focus remains myopic and narrow. He spends too much time building his monument to Che and too little in developing his relationships with key players in his saga, especially Fidel Castro. Making matters worse he does it with a slow and dispassionate approach that never catches fire. One would think he was steeped in enough Eisenstein and Vertov to realize that sweeping change is showcased a lot better with sweeping style.


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It is incredible that with all of the countless crimes that have been uncovered and laid unequivocally at the doorstep of Marxism, from the Berlin Wall to the Gulag archipelago to the Cultural Revolution to the Khmer Rouge, one still finds admirers of Communist totalitarianism in Hollywood and are still making propaganda in its favor. It just shows the moral depravity of Hollywood.
In this particular film a psychotic murderer is glorified. Needless to say that neither his crimes nor his psychotic proclamations were included. That both the director and the actor expect audiences to sit through this seemingly interminable propagandistic film demonstrates the tunnel vision that they have in regards to their object of worship.


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i think that's this is awful produced and directed movie. Benicio Del Toro shouldn't work in production of movies, he should put accent on his acting and that's it. Steven Soderbergh missed the whole point of the idea about revolution, about it's ideals, and most important about life of Che Guevara and so on. Camera is awful, like someone with 2 day working experience is shooting with it, music is ...i don't know..is there some music in the movie???? i will not recommended this piece of sh.. to no one. It's just wasting about 4 hours in front of the TV or whatever.... I can't figure out how can someone rate this movie more than 3 stars. DISASTER....DISASTER....DISASTER....DISASTER Don't watch please. Save yourself from this misery of "movie"


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What I found so curious about this film--I saw the full 4 hour roadshow version, is how oddly dispassionate it is. For a film about 2 very charismatic men--Castro and Che, engaged in a gargantuan political struggle, it's almost totally devoid of emotional fire. The scenes between Benicio Del Toro and Demian Bichir (who is at best a second level actor,with a slightly high pitched voice) have no drama or depth and basically come down to Castro telling Che: go here, go there, do this and that, with no explanation as to what effect or use this action will result in. Odder still is there is an actor in the cast who has the requisite power to play Castro--Joaquim de Almeida, but he's shunted aside in a minor part in the second half. Without the tension or passion that you would expect to fire these men and their followers, the film becomes a dullish epic-length film about hairy, bearded men running through various jungles shouting and shooting to no particular purpose or end. Several of the reviews I've read showered praise on the work of director Steven Soderbergh while ignoring the actors almost completely. (One in fact spent more time talking about Soderbergh's new digital film camera than the plot or actors or the fact that it's entirely in Spanish with English subtitles.)This is an odd, odd thing to do since a) Soderbergh was only a hired gun on the film and b) it's no more than a competent job of work, with an unremarked upon nod to Oliver Stone's JFK in the black and white cut up camera-work when Che visits New York. If you can imagine Reds directed by Andrew McLaglen instead of Warren Beatty, you'd get an idea of the dull competency of this movie.


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The first part, Che in Cuba, is about that portion of his life. It contains too many indistinguishable battles and Che ministering to too many indistinguishable wounded (remember that Che was a physician). It ends as Castro wins the revolution; Che never gets to Havana. The second part, Che in Bolivia, is about guess what. It contains too many indistinguishable battles and Che ministering to too many indistinguishable wounded.
When I realized this was supposed to be an "epic" (I never knew *anything* but the title before it started), I naturally thought of the greatest epic of them all, David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia. More of that later.
Not to be a racist, but aside from what I've already mentioned is the fact that there are too many characters who are, well, indistinguishable -- unknown Hispanic actors who look alike, especially considering they all wear "Che" beards and all wear Che fatigues. This results in the viewer not being able to identify with anyone other than Che, Benicio del Toro (even Fidel has a very minor role). While del Toro's terrific, think of "Lawrence" with Peter O'Toole as the only discernible character: no Alec Guinness, no Omar Sharif, no Anthony Quinn, etc. You get the idea.
Because the other characters are interchangeable, this results in a loss of reference. When top aides of Che are killed, you feel no remorse since you don't know who they are. Even when Che is killed (I don't think that's a spoiler), there's no empathy from the audience -- he's just killed.
He's too one-dimensional to relate to as a human being. Aside from being a revolutionary and second only to Jesus in moral rectitude, the only thing we learn about Che is that he's married with five children (he tells another character that near the end). What was his motivation? A complete enigma.
Maybe Soderbergh is purposely aping Lean. Like Soderbergh's Che, Lean never lets us know anything about Lawrence, the mystery man of Arabia. But at least Lawrence had a friend (Sharif) and associates (Guinness, Quinn). He was as courageous as he was insecure -- i.e., had human qualities. Che is like a machine, about as warm as The Terminator.
Earlier this year there was another war epic, Mongol. Che makes Mongol look like It's a Wonderful Life.


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This "documentary" is a proof of talent being used for mean purposes. The fact that it is financed by the venezuelan government gives it a lack of legitimacy in the purpose of searching for the truth of what really happened those horrible days of April 2002 in Venezuela, something even we venezuelans don't know for sure.
There are ways of lying, and the directors of this stuff lie both by omission and by knowledge.
The venezuelan political process is too complex to be easily understood by foreign audiences, and they take advantage of that. For instance *POSSIBLE SPOILERS* they show pro-Chávez demonstrators shooting at an empty street (what the hell they did that for?) in a way of saying they didn't kill anyone, but didn't bother showing the images we all saw here, of opposition demonstrators (and a journalist) falling dead or injured at the other side of that "empty" street. They can't explain why the chopper of the political police was the only one authorised to fly over Caracas that day and did nothing against the snipers that were all over the roofs of the buildings nearby the presidential palace, something that would exhibit how inefficient would be the security measures to guard the President. A few days after the "coup", the chief of the military guard in charge was asked at the National Assembly (our Congress) why didn't they act against the snipers and he said "'cause they weren't there to act against the president", isn't that a confession?
There is so much more, the fact that the highest rank military announced that Chávez had resigned and 2 days later he said he had lied because "that's politics" and nowadays is the Minister of Internal Affairs of Chávez' administration.
It would take me thousands of words to explain all the lies depicted in this "documentary", made with the intention of selling the world an image of the good old Hugo Chávez who rules for the poor and the bad rich opposition that wants him out at all costs, when the truth is that 60-70% of people rejects his government, and that percentage includes the poor.
I hope those of you who have seen and bought this will be able to see a different version that is being made by a group of venezuelan people showing no less than 30 lies.
Nazi propaganda has returned!


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In this movie, Chávez supporters (either venezuelan and not-venezuelan) just lie about a dramatic situation in our country.
They did not say that the conflict started because of Chávez announcement firing a lot of PDVSA best workers just for political issues.
They did not say anything about more than 96 TV interruptions transmitted by Chávez during only 3 days in "CADENA NACIONAL" (a kind of confiscation o private TV signals). Each one with about 20 minutes of duration.
They did not tell us anything about The quiting announcement made by General en Jefe Lucas Rincon Romero, Inspector General of the army forces, who is a traditional supporter of Chávez. Even now, in despite of his announcement, he is the Ministro de Interior y Justicia. After Chávez return he occuped the Charge of Ministro del Defensa (equals to Defense Secretary in US).
They did not say anything about Chávez orders about shooting against a pacifical people concentration who was claiming for elections.
They did not say anything about the people in this concentration that were killed by Chávez Supporters (either civilians and Military official forces).
They present some facts in a wrong order, in order to lie.
They did not say anything about venezuelan civilian society thats are even now claiming for an elections in order to solve the crisis and Chávez actions in order to avoid the elections.
That's why i tell you.... This movie is just a lot of lies or a big lie.


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Recently, I saw the documentary "The revolution will not be televised", also know as "Chávez: inside the coup". At first I thought it showed a genuine inside view of events during the Venezuela coup of April 2002. What bothered me though was the fact that the tone of the narration and the accompanying music were suggestive, and that at no point any criticism was expressed about Hugo Chávez. This is peculiar because if a documentary is giving an non-biased account of what happened, there should have been some of that too. After all, Chávez certainly is not a saint. Fortunately, since the documentary is several years old, a lot of additional information is available on the internet nowadays, and it was not difficult to find for instance "Urgent Investigation about Chavez-the coup by the 5 European TV Corporations who financed the film which presents blatant falsehoods about Venezuela." It lists the many errors and intended or unintended falsifications in the documentary. (Just use the title as a search string in Google, you will find it). Another interesting document was the video registration of a presentation of the findings of the many errors in this documentary, "X-ray of a lie". To me it seems to be a good counterweight to "Chávez: inside the coup" It's available at video.google. I strongly advice you after watching "Chávez: inside the coup" to look at "X-ray of a lie" and then form your opinion. My conclusion is that Kim Bartley and Donnacha O'Brian were (knowingly or not) part in Chávez-propaganda.


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