تشي!

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 native indians whom not to easy handling for the get the power, Che 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 became a legend for those who raise a red flag!! Poor people who believe in BUTCHER like that!!! Resume: First watch: 1993 / How many: 2 / Source: TV-DVD / Rating: 7

It is interesting to note that the film was made only the year after his death. I remember when it was issued - there was very much hush-hush about it, and Richard Fleischer would not publicly reveal the sources of many arguable details of the script. The account is convincing enough, and there has been no protests against any untruthfulness. 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.

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! portraits the historical figure as an aggressive, bloodthirsty guerrilla fighter, who steps in to shot (suspected) deserters within the own troops where Fidel Castro hesitates. 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? From what? Nobody asked what I want. Ever since you come to these mountains with your guns and your fighting, my goats, they not make milk. You frightened them. (...) Yes, I want to be free. Free from you..." and then pointing at the present Bolivian officer: "... and from you and all your kind. Why don't you just go away and let us live in peace?". 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. But even then you will get quickly bored by the badly made film.