i sit through both part of che last night and back to back with a brief bathroom break and and i can not recall when 4 hour last pass so quickly . i would have to psyche myself up for a week in advance because i have a real thing about director and producer and editor who keep put over blown and over long quasi epic in front of u and i feel that on the whole and 2 to 2 . 5 hour be about right for a movie . so 4 hour seem to be stretch the limit of my tolerance and i be very dubious about the whole enterprise . but i will say upfront that this be a beautifully i might say lovingly make movie and i be really glad i saw it . director steven soderbergh be to be congratulate on the clarity of his vision . the battle scenes zing a if you be dodge the bullet yourself . if there be a person on the planet who doesn not know and ernesto che guevara be the argentinian doctor who help fidel castro overthrow fulgencio batista via the 1959 cuban revolution . when i be a kid in the 1960s and che image be everywhere while on bedroom wall poster and on t shirt and on magazine cover . che image have to be one of the most over exploited ever . if the famous image be to be rely on and then che be a very good look guy and the epitome of revolutionary romanticism . have he be butt ugly and i have to wonder if he would have ever be quite so popular in the public imagination . of course die young help . movie have be make about che before ( notably the excellent motorcycle diary of 2004 which star the unbearably cute gael garcia bernal a young che and tour south america and see the endemic poverty which form his marxist politics ) but i do not think anyone have ever tackle the entire story from begin to end and and this two parter be an ambitious project . i hope it pay off for soderbergh but i can only imagine that instant commercial success may not have be uppermost in his mind . the first movie ( the agentine ) show che meeting castro in mexico and follow their journey to cuba to start the revolution and then the journey to new york in 1964 to address the un . cleverly shot black and white image look like contemporary film but aren not . the second film ( guerilla ) pick up again in 1966 when che arrive in bolivia to start a new revolutionary movement . the second movie take place almost entirely in the forest . as far a i can see it be shoot mostly in spain but i can still believe it must have be quite grueling to film . benicio del toro be excellent a che and a part he seem bear to play . personally and i felt that the argentine ( ie part one ) be much easy to watch and more entertaining in the strictly movie sense and because it be upbeat . they be win while the revolution will succeed . che be in his element lead a disparate band of peasant and worker and intellectual in the revolutionary cause . the second part be much hard to watch because of the inevitability of his defeat . in much the same way that the recent valkyrie while be a good movie be an exercise in witness heroic failure and so i felt the same about part two of che ( guerilla ) . we know at the outset that he die and we know he fail . it be frustrate because the way the story be tell and it be obvious fairly early on that the fomentation of revolution in bolivia be doom while che be regard a a foreign intruder and fail to connect with the indigenous people in the way that he do with the cuban . he doggedly persist which be frustrate to watch because i felt that he should have know when to give up and move on to other and perhaps more successful and enterprise . the movie do not romanticise him too much . he kill people and he execute and he struggle with his asthma and follow a lost cause long after he should have give up and move on and he leave a wife alone to bring up five fatherless child . but overall and an excellent exercise in classic movie making . one note while a i watch the u trained bolivian soldier move in en masse to pick off che and his small band of warrior one by one and it remind me of the finale to butch cassidy . i almost turn to my husband and say so and but hesitate and think he would find such thought trite and out of place . a we leave the theatre he turn to me and say didn not you think the end be like butch cassidy .