Everybody Loves Che

Having not seen Steven Soderbergh’s new Commie-lovefest, Che, I don’t feel particularly comfortable talking about it. But I will second Dirty Harry’s annoyance at the fact that liberal reviewers feel free to bash conservatives preemptively for not supporting a biopic that entirely skips over Che’s murderous past.

Expect a lot of this: Variety’s Todd McCarthy makes a pre-emptive move (I thought liberals didn’t believe in that?) against conservatives in his pan of Steven Soderbergh’s attempt to Lawrence-of-Arabia the mass-murderer Che Guevera:

…and presents American and Latin American authorities so exclusively as cardboard mouthpieces of imperialism and abusive dictatorships, respectively — that some conservative political commentators might work themselves into a lather over it.

You see, any rise of indignation over a $60 million, five-hour attempt to further t-shirtify a sworn enemy of the United States responsible for the murder of at least 600 innocent people (that we know of) is purely knee-jerk lathering on our part. Oh, and we should also avoid any lather over the fact that Che’s psychotic crimes failed to find a few minutes in a 300-plus minute film:

This structure very conveniently elides the period wherein Che, as effective co-head of Castro’s Cuban government, presided over mass executions, the persecution of homosexuals, the ruination of the island’s economy, the ill-fated alliance with the Soviet Union, and so on.

Here’s the short version of McCarthy’s review, from Daily Variety‘s email alerts:

If the director has gone out of his way to avoid the usual Hollywood biopic conventions, he has also withheld any suggestion of why the charismatic doctor, fighter, diplomat, diarist and intellectual theorist became and remains such a legendary figure.

Hm…no mention of the mass murder or the torture. Interesting elision. Nothing like lionizing one of history’s greatest monsters.