Che: Part Two · reception & legacy

How Che: Part Two has been received, argued over, and remembered.

The arc

Dismissed by many as the punishing, downbeat half of a commercial flop in 2008 — the full roadshow cut baffled Cannes and IFC struggled to sell it — Che has since been reappraised as one of Soderbergh's major works, with Part Two increasingly championed as the bolder of the two films.

What's debated

The eternal cinephile split: is Part Two the superior, more rigorous film — a slow-motion study in failure — or the airless slog after Part One's momentum, and is the diptych's refusal of biopic psychology a masterstroke or an evasion?

Its footprint

It lives on less through quotes than through legend: the 4.5-hour Cannes roadshow screening, Benicio del Toro's Best Actor win there, and its status as a landmark of early digital cinema that helped announce the RED camera era.

Where it stands

A canon-climber beloved of the 'Soderbergh is underrated' crowd — the anti-biopic cinephiles cite when arguing biopics don't have to explain their subject.