A movie that stays with you. A-.

I just re-watched this and my god do i love this film so much. It's just beautiful to watch. Gael Garcia Bernal is wonderful, the whole thing is pretty much pitch perfect. One of my alltime faves.

A+

Beautiful film. I really need to rewatch it though.

B



I must say that overall it was a decent movie, but not a masterpiece some make it out to be. The chemistry between Rodrigo de la Serna and Gael García Bernal was great, so at least there, the movie certainly hit gold. If you make a road movie about two close friends on the journey of their life and you have dozens of moments in which only these two friends appear together, good chemistry between the actors is more than necessary. Without it, you can't get the movie going at all. Thankfully, Bernal and de la Serna, as Guevara and Granada respectively are great together, as two characters, two friends, that complete each other. I can't say that the performance of either of them was better than the other one's performance. Both very good, really good and both had their great moments, moreso Bernal of course. The scenes that really stuck in my head were when Guevara tells that professor about how bad his book was, when Guevara holds his goobye speech in the end of the movie (even though it seemed a bit forced in order to explain Guevara's revolutionary future) and when he was having an asthmatic attack on the ship. Especially the latter was very well-acted and made even me grasp for air when I watched it.

The overall best scene of the entire movie, however, was probably when Guevara and Granada meet the homeless couple in the desert and sit with them by the fire. Very well-written and filmed. Speaking of filming, the movie has good cinematography. Not as excellent as some make it out to be, but still above average. Further technical aspects were decent too.

Now while the cinematography was great and all, I had a problem with the movie there. At times, it often seemed as if the movie was an advertisement for tourists to come and see South America, it was like a traveller's video guide. Unfortunately, these moments came up a bit too often for my taste.

As mentioned earlier, the acting was good. Bernal certainly holds a great deal of acting potential and I am looking forward to seeing him in more movies. In this film, he delivers his best acting performance up-to-date.

Another problem, I had with this movie was the fact, that especially towards the end, the movie was a bit too full of clichés. Dolce has already mentioned the hand-waving Lepers, but there were even more (like Guevara and Granada not putting the gloves on and by that going against the rules and the Lepers bringing both food etc.). These clichés were unfortunately quite often in the last half of the movie and predictable.

Moreover, I think that the movie was oversimplifying. In my opinion, it portrays Che Guevara as a Mother Theresa-like person which he obviously wasn't. One can say that it is all authentic and based on Guevara's diaries and Granada's book, but then again, it doesn't take a genious to realize that this point of view was obviously biased. I hoped that the movie would take a more objective angle to the whole story, but unfortunately, it didn't.

While these aspects undeniable go against the movie, it is still a pretty good one. Bernal and de la Serna do a good job and as I said the movie has some really powerful and well-made moments, especially in the middle of the flick.

a very uneven film...

With amazing parts that make you sad and make you laugh...

However there are also some very boring scenes as well.

B-