The Motorcycle Diaries

The formative experiences of young Ernesto “Che” Guevara (later icon of the Cuban communist revolution and martyr to the Marxist cause) during a 1952 trip through South America are chronicled in this energetic, beautifully crafted, but rather meandering film from Brazilian director Walter Salles, based on Guevara's own memoir and a book by Alberto Granado, his companion on the journey. The fundamental notion here is that the 23-year-old's encounter with social injustice and human misery during the eight-month, 8,000-mile odyssey served as a catalyst for the radicalization of his social and political views, but while that's certainly a viable argument, the picture's hagiographic depiction of Guevara--so sensitive and honest that he approaches a kind of secular sainthood--will be very hard to swallow for some. Still, The Motorcycle Diaries is gorgeously shot, and the charismatic, handsome Gael Garcia Bernal makes Guevara's principled earnestness more boyishly charming than irritatingly smug (unfortunately, Rodrigo de la Serna is overly frenetic as Granado, trying too hard for laughs). While neither Salles' directorial acumen nor Bernal's winning performance can fully conceal the movie's essentially episodic nature or convincingly put over the sequences with the heaviest political-economic subtext, the pair are sufficiently skilled to make this portrait of the budding revolutionary well worth a look. Recommended. [Note: Available in either a widescreen or full screen version, DVD extras include a 22-minute “making-of” featurette, eight minutes of deleted scenes (including perhaps the funniest scene of the film, as Guevara and Granado ride in a truck driven by a blind man on a high mountain road with sheer drop-offs), the three-minute subtitled interview “A Moment with Alberto Granado” featuring the real-life Granado, the three-minute subtitled interview “A Moment with Gael Garcia Bernal” from Spanish-language network Telemundo, the two-minute subtitled segment “Toma Uno” (“Take One”) featuring Bernal on Latino entertainment cable network mun2, the three-minute score featurette “Music of the Road: An Interview with Composer Gustavo Santaolalla,” and text cast and filmmaker bios and filmographies. Bottom line: a small but  engaging extras package for this Oscar-nominated bio-pic.] (F. Swietek)