Che! (USA, 1969) 96 min color DIR: Richard Fleischer. SCR: Sy Bartlett, David Karp. PROD: Sy Bartlett. MUSIC: Lalo Schifrin. DOP: Charles F. Wheeler. CAST: Omar Sharif, Jack Palance, Cesare Danova, Robert Loggia, Woody Strode, Frank Silvera, Abraham Sofaer, Sid Haig. (5 Minutes To Live)
Just when The Motorcycle Diaries was being released in theatres, one of my favourite video stores saw fit to stock the DVD-R of this, which at the time was being released by the bootleg operation, 5 Minutes To Live. Gee, you would think that some money-grubbing studio would give a flaming turkey like this a legitimate video release, because its bad reputation would surely attract more than a few curious daredevil viewers. Hell, I’d run down to HMV tomorrow if they put out a deluxe box-set of this mega-bomb. I mean, look at how they’re re-appraising Showgirls! Still, MGM did finally release Myra Breckinridge to DVD, so maybe there’s hope yet.
This big-budget disaster about the Cuban revolution, released by 20th Century Fox, was only known to me (and perhaps to others) by its write-up in the book The 50 Worst Films of All Time. Well, God bless the grey market, or I still would be in the dark about this amazing, hallucinatory cinematic perversion. Okay- we all know about the casting- Omar Sharif as the revolutionary Che Guevara, and of course, Jack Palance as Fidel Castro. But there’s more, much more, where you get to see studio incompetence at its finest. Although director Richard Fleischer had made some terrific movies in his career (Compulsion, Fantastic Voyage), by this point, he was “hit or miss”. For every Boston Strangler, we got something like Che! or Dr. Doolittle.
It hardly matters how close (or even if) this picture sticks to the facts, because it is a fascinating train wreck from which you can’t take your eyes. The movie opens in split screen: on one half we see footage of student revolutions, on the other we see Che’s bullet-riddled corpse. A neat idea in theory, but it implies that Che’s sacrifice inspired all of the student unrest in America! Here is yet another misguided film made by out-of-touch adults trying to understand the younger generation. On another bizarre note, Guevara narrates the film from beyond the grave, much like Sunset Blvd.!
The script basically shows the team of Cuban rebels going from one ambush to another, roaming through the jungle, attempting to “liberate” even the people who come gunning for them, by coaxing them to join their cause to free Cuba from the capitalist invaders. The actors look they were hosed down in water to simulate their profuse sweating in tropical climate. As for Palance? Well, after seeing this, it was clear that his Oscar win for City Slickers was an apologia for ignoring his work here.
The film also features strange inserts in which supporting characters talk about their reactions about Che and the revolution. I suppose a far more complex film needs to be made about the 1961 revolution, in which Castro came to power, and despite every other bizarre touch in this studio pic, it at least tries to address the complex issue of how the Che / Castro revolution divided even their own people.
The best performance in this picture actually belongs to Sid Haig, who appears as one of the peasants who joins Che’s cause, and then calls him on the hypocrisy of it. Very late in the film, we see an old farmer inform the police of Che’s whereabouts. When asked why he had turned in Guevara, who fighting for his freedom, the old man replies, “Freedom from what? No one asked me what I wanted.” Perhaps these observations belong to an obviously pro-Capitalist screenwriter, but it at least it tries to address the complex issues of the rebellion.
So there you have it- and speaking of big studio disasters, would somebody please give proper releases to Skidoo and The Phynx? (UPDATE: they did, and they’re glorious.)
Updated from a review originally published in Vol. #1, Issue #16. As of this writing, Che! still isn’t on legitimate home video, and likely never will be, considering who now owns the Fox catalog.
Greg Woods
Greg Woods has been a film enthusiast since his teens, and began his writing "career" at the same time- prolific in capsule reviews of everything he had watched, first on index cards, then those hardcover dollar store black journals, then an old Mac IIsi. He founded The Eclectic Screening Room in 2001, as a portal to share his film love with the world, and find some like-minded enthusiasts along the way. In addition to having worked in the film industry for over two decades, he has been a co-programmer of films at Trash Palace, and a programmer/co-founder of the Toronto Film Noir Syndicate. He has also written for Broken Pencil, CU-Confidential, Micro-Film, and is currently working on his first novel. His secret desire is for someone to interview him for a podcast or a DVD extra.