Che

Steven Soderbergh's Che opened in 2008 as a single 257-minute film at Cannes, where Benicio del Toro won Best Actor. It was then released in cinemas as two separate features (Che: Part One (The Argentine) and Che: Part Two (Guerrilla)), and both were acclaimed internationally for their procedural patience. Soderbergh shot in Spanish throughout, on the RED One digital camera, with del Toro inhabiting Ernesto Guevara across roughly a decade of revolutionary biography.

Part One reconstructs the 1956-59 Cuban Revolution from the landing of the Granma in Oriente province through the Battle of Santa Clara to Castro's entry into Havana, intercut with Guevara's 1964 speech to the United Nations General Assembly. Part Two follows Guevara's catastrophic Bolivian campaign of 1966-67. Demián Bichir plays Fidel Castro; Catalina Sandino Moreno plays Aleida March, Guevara's second wife; Franka Potente, Lou Diamond Phillips and Matt Damon appear in supporting roles.

It is a procedural, and Soderbergh declines every convention of the biographical arc: no childhood, no motorcycle journey, no domestic life, no tidy ideological evolution. What remains is the granular work of small-unit guerrilla warfare across two terrains and two political contexts. It was a commercial disappointment, but it has since been reassessed as one of the most disciplined American art films of its decade. Del Toro's performance, held in absolute restraint, is among the most committed Spanish-language portrayals by an American actor.