Che Part Two: Guerilla

Guerilla is the second part of Steven Soderbergh's film about argentinean revolutionary , Ernesto "Che" Guevara. Benicio del Toro plays the role of Che's final months (1967) in the bolivian andes where he formed a small guerilla to overthrown the bolivian military government. In this second part, as well as in the first part, we have Demián Bichir (Weeds) as Fidel Castro, Rodrigo Santoro (300 and Lost) as Raul Castro and Catalina Sandino Moreno (Maria Full of Grace) as Aleida March de Guevara. Also we have actors like Gaston Pauls (Nine Queens) as argentinean painter/guerillero Ciro Bustos, Lou Diamond Phillips (La Bamba) as Secretary General of Bolivia's Communist Party Mario Monje, Franka Potente (Run Lola Run) as only-female guerillera Tania, Óscar Jaenada (Noviembre) as bolivian guerillero Darío and Matt Damon as parish priest Father Leo Schwartz.

In general this part of the film has more action but does not have any good character development other than Che's character. Also, the editing sometimes made it difficult to differentiate between who was from the guerilla or who was from the bolivian army. Del Toro's performance was great as he transformed literally to become the charismatic leader. The other actors were ok, some did not pull out the correct accents (i.e. puerto rican actors speaking like puerto ricans instead of cubans) but Franka Potente stand out in a perfect argentinean accent (she is german) and puertorican actor Norman Santiago (Maldeamores) spoke a good cuban accent. The story was a bit sloppy in occasions but overall was not boring. At least, we got to see the final months of Che's struggle to bring communism to latin america. Not Soderbergh's greatest piece of work but one of the best performances by the puertorican actor, Benicio del Toro.

Benicio del Toro recently won the spaniard award Goya for best actor for the first part of the film, The Argentine. As well as the best actor award in Cannes 2008 for both parts of the movie.