Benicio del Toro as Che Guevara in Steven Soderbergh’s Che. It’s difficult to imagine a figure more polarizing than the subject of Steven Soderbergh’s ambitious new biopic. Mention the name Che Guevara, or flash a picture of one of the endless variations on Alberto Korda’s iconic image of the revolutionary leader, and you’re bound to get an earful. But most reactions are of the knee-jerk variety, and are based more on reputation than history….

With the recent cinematic dramatizations of the life of Che Guevara, from his early days as a road tripping med student in the excellent The Motorcycle Diaries to Steven Soderbergh’s lengthy version of his revolutionary years in the four and a half hour biopic that just premiered at Cannes, an unusual perspective was obviously necessary to any documentary version of his story to keep it from seeming stale or overly academic in comparison. And…