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Che
Metascore
64 out of 100

Generally favorable reviews - based on 24 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 15 out of 24
  2. Mixed: 7 out of 24
  3. Negative: 2 out of 24
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  1. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Keith Phipps
    91
    In both halves, Soderbergh emphasizes observation over ideology with an eye toward the mundane details of life on the front lines of a revolution.
  2. Rolling Stone
    Reviewed by: Peter Travers
    88
    Che looks dazzling, whether the camera is weaving through a battle or trying to bore into Che's haunted soul. Del Toro stands up to Soderbergh's relentless scrutiny. As for the movie, it's a reward to audiences eager to break from the play-it-safe pack. Game on.
  3. Chicago Sun-Times
    Reviewed by: Roger Ebert
    88
    Benicio Del Toro, one of the film's producers, gives a heroic performance, not least because it's self-effacing.
  4. Boston Globe
    Reviewed by: Wesley Morris
    88
    The labor applied to Che is apparent, but it would be wrong to characterize the movie as laborious the way it was in, say, 2006's "The Good German," where Soderbergh took great pains to re-create 1940s Hollywood wartime glamour.
  5. Portland Oregonian
    Reviewed by: Shawn Levy
    83
    Leaving aside politics, it's quite an achievement in art.
  6. Seattle Post-Intelligencer
    Reviewed by: Sean Axmaker
    83
    It's all about Guevara's education as a revolutionary and his development as a leader in the jungles and in battle.
  7. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: J. Hoberman
    80
    Every Bolivian sequence has its Cuban parallel, which is why Che's two parts are best seen together. Guerrilla may be the more realized of the two--and could certainly stand on its own--but it is only comprehensible in the light of The Argentine. Elevating Guerrilla to tragedy, The Argentine puts some hope in hopelessness--and even in history.
  8. Chicago Tribune
    Reviewed by: Michael Phillips
    75
    Che is Soderbergh's most interesting film in years, defiantly eccentric and absorbing at its best.
  9. Philadelphia Inquirer
    Reviewed by: Steven Rea
    75
    What this slow-moving but fascinating two-part portrait does do is hunker down in the jungles and mountains of Cuba and (in the second part) Bolivia, capturing in keen, almost Zen-like detail the trudging and trekking, the recruiting and strategizing, the fighting and the philosophizing.
  10. The Hollywood Reporter
    Reviewed by: Peter Brunette
    70
    If this earnest, two-part biopic with a total running time of 268 minutes sometimes lacks cinematic flair, the straight-ahead, chronologically-driven film will inform and, to a somewhat lesser extent, excite viewers everywhere.
  11. Salon.com
    Reviewed by: Andrew O'Hehir
    70
    I was never bored, in four hours-plus. Whether or not it ends up becoming a great film (or films), this is miles and miles beyond anything I thought Soderbergh could create from this material.
  12. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Sheri Linden
    70
    The political realities of his legacy can be endlessly debated, but in this flawed work of austere beauty, the logistics of war and the language of revolution give way to something greater, a struggle that may be defined by politics but can't be contained by it.
  13. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: A.O. Scott
    70
    Mr. Soderbergh once again offers a master class in filmmaking. As history, though, Che is finally not epic but romance. It takes great care to be true to the factual record, but it is, nonetheless, a fairy tale.
  14. Entertainment Weekly
    Reviewed by: Owen Gleiberman
    67
    As political theater, Che moves from faith to impotence, which is certainly a valid reading of Communism in the 20th century. Yet as drama, that makes the second half of the film borderline deadly.
  15. USA Today
    Reviewed by: Claudia Puig
    63
    Che is a mass of contradictions, perhaps like the iconic revolutionary himself.
  16. Variety
    Reviewed by: Todd McCarthy
    60
    If the director has gone out of his way to avoid the usual Hollywood biopic conventions, he has also withheld any suggestion of why the charismatic doctor, fighter, diplomat, diarist and intellectual theorist became and remains such a legendary figure; if anything, Che seems diminished by the way he's portrayed here.
  17. Christian Science Monitor
    Reviewed by: Peter Rainer
    58
    Although Steven Soderbergh's two-part Che may have an epic running time of almost 4-1/2 hours, its scope is surprisingly narrow.
  18. ReelViews
    Reviewed by: James Berardinelli
    50
    What potentially could have been the greatest asset possessed by Che - its unapologetic length - turns into its greatest detriment.
  19. Baltimore Sun
    Reviewed by: Michael Sragow
    50
    The title and length suggest a biographical epic, but it's neither biographical nor epic. It's as if the director, Steven Soderbergh, wanted to take tissue samples of Ernesto Che Guevara's political life.
  20. New York Magazine (Vulture)
    Reviewed by: David Edelstein
    50
    Che is an impressive physical feat, but especially in the second part, which gives you day after day of rebels being killed and indigenous poor people not joining the good fight, you start to look forward to Che getting riddled by bullets. The whole movie is a forced march.
  21. Time
    Reviewed by: Richard Corliss
    50
    In the end, the Cuban newspaper was nearly right: it's not the Castro character but the whole of this grand, doomed experiment that lacks "charisma and depth."
  22. The New Yorker
    Reviewed by: Anthony Lane
    50
    It would be comforting, and tidy, to suggest that the director had waited all his life for the chance to make this film, as if it meant everything to him; yet I still have no idea what truly quickens his heart, and at some level, for all the movie's narrative momentum, Che retains the air of a study exercise--of an interest brilliantly explored. How else to explain one's total flatness of feeling at the climax of each movie?
  23. New York Post
    Reviewed by: Kyle Smith
    38
    You can't spell cliché without Che. And as I endured this mad dream directed - or perhaps committed - by Steven Soderbergh, I wondered where I'd seen it all before. The booted stomping through the greensward, the jungly target shooting? It's a remake of Woody Allen's "Bananas," right?
  24. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Mick LaSalle
    25
    If Soderbergh's ambition was to make us feel just how dull it would be to a woods-dwelling communist guerrilla, he succeeded.
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User Reviews

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User Score
7.1 out of 10

Generally favorable reviews- based on 35 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 13 out of 16
  2. Mixed: 2 out of 16
  3. Negative: 1 out of 16
  1. tonyGreen
    7
    This is strangely dull for a biopic of such an interesting historical figure. I didn't hate it. The pace could be described as languid, and it goes on for 5 hours (in two parts on DVD; 'The Argentine', 'Guerilla'). Well shot and has the tinge of authenticity. More edifying than entertaining. I'm glad i watched it but i don't need to watch it again… Full Review »
  2. Lizziebeth-1
    5
    My taste for this was ruined by 1. Higher (unmet) personal expectations about Che’s actual achievements 2. Nil editorialisation except date/time stamping 3. Nil emotional impact due to the inexorable drive to its fait accompli impoverished ending 4. Tricky structuring of the narrative 5. badly handled subtitling – although I usually like subtitles 6. my tiredness due to its duplicate length (in less than comfortable cinema seating at the Sydney Film Festival). As with Soderbergh’s Full Frontal(2002), which I watched again over the weekedn for comparison, this entry is qutie a-typical of him. The director makes no effort to stamp his creative mark on this bio flick, I don’t think, except that some scenes were incomprehensively shot with a blue filter, possibly as a poor-man’s process (day-for-night). Che Parts 1+2 are intentionally minimalist – my contention being that it’s TOO minimalist, because how do you account for the subject’s infamous, mythic international cultural status borne of nothing but his 1. incorruptability with the peasants, and 2. his grimy beard? Much worse, the audience was just as worn down - in a bad way - from all the grime and violent gun battles as was no doubt Che himself (but even that wasn’t properly brought out). While on an intellectual level I can admire that, it does not a movie make unless there is an emotional connection. But if this overdue film’s very nature is such that audience affect and emotion is deliberately worn away, so all we’re left with is the (blue) footage just flowing in front of our eyes, then what was the point after 50yrs ? Maybe the point is that there wasn’t one. Not even for Soderbergh. I’d even go as far as to say that while at the end Benicio’s Che was, of course, utterly unresponsive to his team’s and his own capture, and to his dream’s complete failure as he was executed, ironically that was the most impactful he had been for me during the whole preceding 4hrs. Now how was THAT worth a film ? Lizziebeth-1, IMDb Sydney, Australia.… Full Review »
  3. Tyrone
    10
    Unparalleled in execution and unbiasedness , a truly un-hollywood picture uncompromising and meticulously realized. there will never be another like it or not .… Full Review »
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