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Hagiocalypse Now [Dan Collins]

MEET Che Guevara. Just think of him as Jesus plus Abraham Lincoln with a touch of Moses and Dr. Doug Ross. After 4½ hours of watching Dr. Ernesto “Che” Guevara heal the sick, teach the illiterate, daze the women, execute the lawless, defeat the corrupt, uplift the peasantry and spew the sound bite, I was convinced there would be a scene in which he turned water to Bacardi.

You can’t spell cliché without “Che.” And as I endured this mad dream directed – or perhaps committed – by Steven Soderbergh, I wondered where I’d seen it all before. The booted stomping through the greensward, the jungly target shooting? It’s a remake of Woody Allen’s “Bananas,” right? Minus punch lines – or perhaps with them. “We are in a difficult situation,” Che observes, at a point when his army is surrounded and forced to eat its horses.

The story of the Argentine doctor Ernesto “Che” Guevara is played with much broody self-importance by Benicio Del Toro. It will be shown in two parts after its one-week opening run. That way, on consecutive evenings, it can bore everyone but activist grad students.

41 Replies to “Hagiocalypse Now [Dan Collins]”

  1. bill says:

    What’s not to like about a warm cuddly tale about a psychopathic ideologue at Christmas time?

  2. Well, this movie is necessary, since kids today think of Che as simply a cool guy to wear on your shirt. Now they need to be “educated” about what a hero he was.

  3. Pablo says:

    It really drags along, but it’s got a great ending.

  4. DarthRove says:

    I heard, at the end, he really got it … handed … to him.

  5. Bob Reed says:

    Che = Hero!, Principled man of Integrity!, Protector of the People!

    Bush = Dolt!, Rube!, Criminal!, Fascist!, Exploiter!

    A more twisted and absurd reality could hardly be imagined; only in Holly-wierd!

  6. Spies, Brigands, and Pirates says:

    4.5 hours?

    Reminds me of those LPs of Stalin’s speeches, of which several discs were nothing but applause (the people there were afraid to be the first one to stop clapping, and the record guys were afraid to edit out any of the applause).

  7. BJTexs says:

    Let’s see now … what should i do ?…?

    4.5 hours of uncritical slavering hero worship of the psycho Che …

    Or …

    Paint myself with pine resin, set myself on fire and run through an airport security center screaming “ALLAH’S HELL FIRE IS HERE, INFIDEL DOGS!!!”

    Decisions, decisions…

  8. alppuccino says:

    Paint myself with pine resin, set myself on fire and run through an airport security center screaming “ALLAH’S HELL FIRE IS HERE, INFIDEL DOGS!!!”

    As long as you put those shoes on the conveyor and show your boarding pass.

  9. BJTexs says:

    Al: I forgot to mention that I would be naked.

  10. alppuccino says:

    Al: I forgot to mention that I would be naked.

    Well, they’re still gonna wanna see the contents of your carry-on bag.

    (rimshot)

    gross

  11. JD says:

    BJ – I vote for …

    Paint myself with pine resin, set myself on fire and run through an airport security center screaming “ALLAH’S HELL FIRE IS HERE, INFIDEL DOGS!!!”

  12. Mossberg500 says:

    Is setting someone else on fire as an option?

  13. Mossberg500 says:

    Is setting someone else on fire as an option?

    Time for my daily constituitional.

  14. BJTexs says:

    I’m very uncomfortable talking about setting my carry on bag on the X-Ray conveyor.

    I’m kind of a prude that way.

  15. alppuccino says:

    Perhaps you’d be more comfortable with Barney patting you down then.

  16. JD says:

    You guys just are not right.

  17. BJTexs says:

    Al: As long as I was completely engulfed in flames, that would be fine.

  18. BJTexs says:

    OW! OW, DAMMIT!

  19. alppuccino says:

    Tooshay Beej. Tooshay

  20. BJTexs says:

    You guys just are not right.

    INFIDEL FLAMERIST!!

  21. alppuccino says:

    It’s just that I hear Barney moonlights at the airport, what with congressional pay being what it is. And the french benefits – YOWZA!

  22. Slartibartfast says:

    Perhaps you’d be more comfortable with Barney patting you down then.

    As long as I was completely engulfed in flames, that would be fine.

    See, I was thinking “purple dinosaur”, and so this made a little less sense than it otherwise ought to have. Although the folks on alt.barney.die.die.die might think this was all perfectly reasonable.

  23. irongrampa says:

    Won’t bore me a bit. Can’t imagine wasting an eyeball of peurile shit like that.

    Besides, the driveway needs waxing again.

  24. Techie says:

    No, the Left is getting themselves hard thinking about Putin making dissent = treason in Russia.

    “WHY didn’t we think of it first?”

  25. Synova says:

    LOL.

    Way to turn a comment thread about Che into something with actual value. :-)

  26. Sticky B says:

    One of the commenters over at the NYPost makes the case that present day Cuba is the best thing going in the Carribean. That the quality of life in Cuba is far better than those capitalist havens, Haiti and Dominican Republic. I can’t promise you that it was one of our trolls posting under a different psuedonym, but the breathtaking stupidity looked familiar. Other posters were trying to explain the meaning of the word capitalism and why it doesn’t neccessarily apply to his two strawcountries, but were doing so in vein.

  27. Andrew the Noisy says:

    Of course. All places not Kommitted to Demokratsky Socialitsy are the running dogs of the Imperialist Bourgeois, Tovarisch!

    Like Trotsky. Major Kapitalist and Kounter-Revolutionary. Two Minutes Hate is never enough.

  28. Mikey NTH says:

    I think “Cli-Che” is one of the best mockeries I have heard in some time. Putting that on a shirt or poster with the picture would really set it home.

  29. Mikey NTH says:

    Funny. When I first heard the ‘Barney’ reference I was thinking of an ill-tempered Scottie.

  30. ccoffer says:

    Che Guevara was not a doctor. He was a dropout.

  31. Spies, Brigands, and Pirates says:

    I’m very uncomfortable talking about setting my carry on bag on the X-Ray conveyor.

    What? Don’t you want your future offspring to have a shot at a full-ride scholarship to Professor Xavier’s School for Gifted Children?

  32. Mikey NTH says:

    #31 SBP:

    I remember seeing the one X-Men movie where the one boy (the one with chill-breath) return home and confesses to his family and his motehr asks if he could try not being a mutant.

    My thought then was “Lady, he’s your son – didn’t you frickin’ notice? I mean, why is Frisky the cat walking around with icicles on his whiskers in August? Why the room got cold when he sighed? Did you breast feed and wonder why you are getting frostbite there? You heated a bottle for him and it turned to ice? Didn’t anything clue you in that he ain’t quite right?”

    On the good side, the dude had a job with ski resorts in the winter and office complexes in the summer.

  33. takeshi kovacs says:

    Does the line, as I recall from Monty Python’s comment of the Church of the Loony; involve a tub of warm creeble and going
    “Squawk, Squawk”

  34. MarkD says:

    I think of him as worm food. Makes me feel sad. Sad for the worms I fished with when I was a kid, not Che. With Che, I’m only sad it didn’t last longer and hurt more.

    He and Fidel are proof that nothing is so bad that it can’t be made worse.

  35. buzz says:

    Sounds like a good movie, but the one coming out next year? “Adolph” about a artist who grows up to lead his country out of poverty. (and kills a shitload of people and invades about everyone) He does turn out to be kind of a bad guy though, he invades the local communist country. Same basic ending as this one. “Benito” should also be pretty good. Slightly different ending that the other two though. Basic idea about the same, but a I don’t think a lamp pole made any kind of appearance in the other ones.
    In the pipeline there is “Mao” and “Papa Joe”. Maybe “Vladimir”

  36. Swen Swenson says:

    He and Fidel are proof that nothing is so bad that it can’t be made worse.

    I thought that was the role of congress?

  37. Noah D says:

    Buzz – I was thinking maybe Daniel Craig for the lead role in ‘Reinhard’.

    SPOILER!

    Even though he dies in the end, his buddies avenge him. So it’s all cool.

  38. buzz says:

    “Daniel Craig for the lead role in ‘Reinhard”
    I don’t know, man. Would it work if the hero dies in the beginning? Plus, you know a lot of people deny he even existed. Might loose out on the desired Palestinian gate receipts.

  39. Merovign says:

    #26 Sticky B:

    Consider the response “Pretty much none of those words mean what you think they mean.”

  40. Rusty says:

    The person Bill Ayers would most like to be-Che. Well. Except for the being taken out into a field and shot part. He probably wouldn’t like that.
    They are really a lot alike. When confronted they ran away.

  41. BJTexs says:

    I’d like to offer thanks to all of the commentators here for their abiding interest in my carry on bag.

    Spys, etal: If I were to have the qualifying spawn a urologist in Massachusetts dies a slow and painful death.

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