By Mark Goldblatt on NRO:
Hollywood’s latest round of “Che-mania” kicked off last Friday in New York with a one week preview of Steven Soderbergh’s epic four hour biopic on the life and times of Ernesto Che Guevara. The film opens nationwide, edited into two halves, in January.
When asked why the movie needed to be so long, co-producer and star Benecio Del Toro replied, “That is a question for Che. Why such a fulfilled life? We believe that this is the shortest film about Che Guevara’s revolutionary life that could be made.”
Well, no.
The shortest film about Che’s revolutionary life has already been made. In it, a couple of scruffy, paramilitary-looking, motorcycle-riding cartoon cockroaches decide to “take over” a kitchen, running amok until a giant muscle-bound can of Raid appears and “kills them dead.”Guevara, in reality, belongs to that species of human vermin who attach themselves to a charismatic villain — in Che’s case, Fidel Castro; in Heinrich Himmler’s case, Adolf Hitler; in Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s case, Osama bin Laden — and enact their murderous agendas until the countervailing forces of history end their pathetic existences. Granted, Che is more photogenic than either the thin-lipped Poindexter Himmler or the hairy-backed Super Mario Brother Sheikh. It’s hard to imagine either of them ever moving a gross of tee shirts the way Che does. But the fact that Che continues to sell is a testament to the historical ignorance of every consumer of his visage. [Read More...]
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