Sacrificio: Who Betrayed Che Guevara?

For those of us growing up politically precious and hopelessly romantic in the '60s, Che Guevara was the man--a kind of revolutionary James Dean with a cool beret and even cooler cultural cachet, fighting to liberate the wretched of the Latin American earth. We savored the myths, brooded over the gruesome, widely published photos of the assassinated hero (in which we clearly recognized the murderous handiwork of the CIA) and…eventually moved on. Thirty-five years later, filmmakers Erik Gandini and Tarik Saleh have, for some fairly inexplicable reason, revisited the circumstances surrounding Che's capture and execution in Bolivia in this very strange and strangely fascinating program (originally produced for Swedish TV). Sacrificio focuses in particular on the possible role of Che's comrade-in-arms Ciro Bustos in selling him out to the CIA and the Bolivian military, but also raises other questions. What was radical French journalist and possible guerrilla Regis Debray's role in this ignominious affair? Did Orlando Bazan (a.k.a. Cambio) turn yellow and desert Che and the cause? Does ex-CIA operative Felix Rodriguez really have a pinch of tobacco from Che's last pipe stored in a glass bubble in the handle of his handgun? Who cares? Oy vey! Between the dense, broken-field narrative, the pumped-up intrigue, the techno-beat soundtrack, and the gonzo visual style, I had to rest between DVD chapters. The filmmakers have obviously learned their craft more from watching reality TV and music videos than from cinema vérité, and there's an unsettlingly staged look to many of the sequences (with some “archival footage” looking newly minted), but while Sacrificio is clever, accomplished, and cool to look at, it's not the kind of filmmaking that inspires confidence in the trustworthiness or honesty of the content. A marginal buy for Latin American collections (or John Le Carré fans). Aud: C, P. (G. Handman)