It is interesting to note that the film was made only the year after his death. I remember when it was issued - there was very much hush-hush about it, and Richard Fleischer would not publicly reveal the sources of many arguable details of the script. The account is convincing enough, and there has been no protests against any untruthfulness. Omar Sharif as Che makes a convincing character of great controversy and self-contradictoriness, while it is possible at the same time to understand him - why he abandoned the Castro regime as a hopeless case of either becoming a puppet of Russia or of America, to try to make an inter-South-American revolution of his own. Of course, it was utterly unrealistic, which he failed to realize, having no detachment but rather an obsession with any revolution at any cost.
Jack Palance has been criticized for his almost caricature of Castro, but he has made the best of it, Castro was actually like that, and Palance has studied him carefully.
There is nothing wrong with the film as film either. The quality has its flaws, but the direction and cinematic realization is practically flawless.
The greatest credit of the film, though, is the unmasking of Che as the tragic megalomaniac he was, a sick man gone wrong from the beginning and getting stuck in a vicious circle of violence going irrevocably from bad to worse, his pride outgrowing him into arrogance and inhumanity leading only one way into self-destruction, a man obsessed with constantly worsening his own tragedy, made clear enough by Omar Sharif.
In brief, an underrated film of great documentary objectivity charting the psychology of man at his most destructive.
Jack Palance has been criticized for his almost caricature of Castro, but he has made the best of it, Castro was actually like that, and Palance has studied him carefully.
There is nothing wrong with the film as film either. The quality has its flaws, but the direction and cinematic realization is practically flawless.
The greatest credit of the film, though, is the unmasking of Che as the tragic megalomaniac he was, a sick man gone wrong from the beginning and getting stuck in a vicious circle of violence going irrevocably from bad to worse, his pride outgrowing him into arrogance and inhumanity leading only one way into self-destruction, a man obsessed with constantly worsening his own tragedy, made clear enough by Omar Sharif.
In brief, an underrated film of great documentary objectivity charting the psychology of man at his most destructive.