Dec 03 2008
Che wants you to join the revolution!
And I guess, for now, the movie’s still gonna be called Che, rather than Guerrilla, as previously rumored.
For those who haven’t exactly been tracking this picture, it’s the latest film by the iconoclastic, impossible-to-pigeonhole American director Steven Soderbergh, and it stars critically-lauded thesp Benicio Del Toro as the titular Argentine revolutionary, Ernesto “Che” Guevara. (Del Toro won the Best Actor Award at last year’s Cannes International Film Festival for his typically bravura performance.)
The massive biopic has divided both critics and audiences pretty sharply. Also, exhibitors have been wringing their hands over its unwieldy 4-hours-plus running time: it doesn’t allow for a lot of ticket/seat turnover, or more than, say, two or three showings per day. As a result, there’s not much profit to forecast. Couple that epic length with the fact that about 98% of the flick isn’t in English — so there are those “pesky subtitles” for viewers to deal with — and you pretty much have a bona fide equivalent of Box Office Poison.
But you have to give Soderbergh a lot of credit for sticking to his guns and refusing to alter the movie so that the final result has remained in line with his original vision. Distributor IFC Films deserves a shout out too, for having the balls to release it as is.
A special, full-length “roadshow edition” of Che will play in New York and Los Angeles on December 12, 2008, with a Kill Bill-style two-part release slated to open in theaters around the country on January 9, 2009.
You can watch a brand-new trailer for the film over here.
