History's love affair with tousle-haired Che Guevara receives an unnecessary shot in the arm with Walter Salles's fervent biopic of the revolutionary-minded medical student's gap year.
Che toured South America in 1952 as a young medical student with his friend Alberto Granado, a cheery postgrad in biochemistry, on Granado's spluttering Norton 500 motorbike.
This film is based partly on Che's own memoir Travel Notes, later renamed The Motorcycle Diaries, and Granado's book Travels With Che Guevara.
Their route took them from Guevara's upper-middle-class family home in Argentina, through the Andes, into Chile, then to the Peruvian Amazon and Machu Picchu, so they could arrive in Venezuela in time for Alberto's 30th birthday. It's easy on the eye - there are lovely landscapes and Guevara is played by the handsome and charismatic Gael Garcia Bernal.
On their journey, Granado and Guevara cheekily pass themselves off as doctors working on a cure for leprosy to obtain free board, lodging and motorcycle maintenance. Both have an eye for the ladies. But they also encounter poor people for the first time.
Che wasn't the hero many like to think, but his killing in Bolivia in 1967 has allowed myths to sprout. Salles does them justice.
TIM FELLOWS
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