Now that I've seen Steven Sodebergh's 4 hour epic about Argentinian communist/revolutionist Che Guevara, I have gathered around concrete thoughts about what it all means & why in the living hell he would release such a thing. First off the accusations that Sodebergh is a communist just based on the fact that he has made a movie entirely about a communist is freakishly funny. As Glenn Kenny pointed out, this is far from being a 'valentine' to the guerrilla leader- it's just a look at a man that won his first revolution but sought out to change the world even more and failed. There is boredom and scenes that don't quite fit- scenes that were just out in the open for historical purposes but when the movies kicks it really kicks. The war zone is populated by desperation and the need to fight for the cause but what sodebergh tries to explore here is how a man that was a hero to millions became an embattled & failed warrior. Castro's Cuba is still Castro's Cuba in 2009- which is why the relevance of this movie is very existant, 50 years later. There is definitely a very mixed feeling in watching a movie this long and this arduous without actually asking yourself- why bother? I cannot complain about something this ambitious and expertly made even if I wouldn't necessarily highly recommend it. The fact that not every one of its 257 minutes gathered on screen works is furstrating- even more frustrating is the fact that the action is almost non existant and its pace asks you to be patient, very. This is not the landmark movie we were all anticipating but Benicio Del Toro's performance is even better that I originally thought it would be- to say he's electrifying would make me sound cliched and full of myself, but he is. Judging by his recent films, Sodebergh does not have the same magic touch he had with his astonishing stretch of films from 1998-2001 (Out Of Sight, The Limey, Traffic, Erin Brokovich & Ocean's Eleven). Since Then he's resorted to Artsy, ambitious fare that has steeped from the mundane to the messy- altough I appreciate his remake of Solaris and the more recent The Girlfriend Experience. Che falls in the middle and -to tell you the truth- I actually can't make up my mind about it. Call this a mixed review.