Product Description
An inspirational adventure based on the true story of two young men whose thrilling and dangerous road trip across latin america becomes a life-changing journey of self-discovery. Studio: Uni Dist Corp. (mca) Release Date: 05/22/2007 Starring: Gael Garcia Bernal Mia Maestro Run time: 127 minutes Rating: R

Amazon.com
The beauty of the South American landscape and of Gael Garcia Bernal (Y Tu Mama Tambien, Bad Education) gives The Motorcycle Diaries a charisma that is decidedly apolitical. But this portrait of the young Che Guevara (later to become a militant revolutionary) is half buddy-movie, half social commentary--and while that may seem an unholy hybrid, under the guidance of Brazillian director Walter Salles (Central Station) the movie is quietly passionate. Guevara and his friend Alberto Granado (Rodrigo de la Serna, a lusty and engaging actor) set off from Buenos Aires, hoping to circumnavigate the continent on a leaky motorcycle. They end up travelling more by foot, hitchhiking, and raft, but their experience of the land and the people affects them profoundly. No movie could affect an audience the same way, but The Motorcycle Diaries gives a soulful glimpse of an awakening social conscience, and that's worth experiencing. --Bret Fetzer

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.0 based on 264 reviews)

Awesome Movie, not so great DVD edition.

The movie is great, lots of reviews about it. But this edition has subtitles embedded on the movie that you CAN'T TURN OFF. Beware of that before buying it ;)
November 09, 2008

Oveglorified Psychopath

Let's see . . . what did Che Guevara do with his life? Oh, yeah, that's right, he killed people. That's all. He just killed a lot of people. That . . . is . . . all.

But . . . because he killed a lot of people in the name of Communism AND he hated America all the liberals/leftists have overglorified and overrated him.

Just like they once did with Josef Stalin.
November 05, 2008

che guevara

esta pelicula era muy bueno porque los actores han hecho un bueno trabajo. la pelicula mostrado muchas paises be latina america. tambien, la pelicula mostrado muchos partes de la vida de ernesto guevara. el che guevara el mundo conoce es muy diferente de el che guevara este pelicula. si quieres aprender mas sobre la vida de che guevara, ves este pelicula.
October 14, 2008

Beautifully Done

This is a powerful story and I think helped me understand more about Che Guevara. When you see his deep passion for the people and dedication to "the least of these," you can see more how he became a revolutionary. Even though he ended up caught up in violence, you can see how his heart began in the right place.

Beautiful cinematography, and Gael Garcia Bernal does a wonderful job as Che, with just the right mix of intensity and innocence.
October 09, 2008

Bad

Imagine a film purporting to depict the youth of Adolf Hitler that never dealt with an instance of his Anti-Semitism and you will about have what The Motorcycle Diaries represents for Latin American Communism. The film, based upon the book of the same name, culled from the diaries of Ernesto `Che' Guevara (Gael García Bernal), the mass murdering top henchman of Fidel Castro in the Cuban Revolution, attempts to portray the monster as an all-caring near-Christ-like figure. Now, I am not one who's a PC stickler when it comes to art and truth, but the fact is this film is a) bad history, and b) even worse art. While not quite as bad a film as Monster, for its better visuals than that feminist ode to girl power via serial murder, the earlier film at least acknowledged that its subject was a mass murderer, even as it excused it. By contrast, The Motorcycle Diaries not only glosses over Che's massive crimes against humanity, but gives absolutely no hint that such evil ever resided in the man. He was Latin America's Osama bin Laden before there was an Osama bin Laden. Yet, to the recrudescent Hollywood PC Elitists he is a hero, simply because he opposed America. That, alone, to them, erases all of the blood on his hands, even though he was enamored of the Soviet Union's genocidal methods. Yet, George W. Bush, a man I certainly do not admire, is utterly reviled for his crimes against humanity, even though his `cause' is arguably only just as ignoble and ineffective as Che's ultimately was.
The film, which was lauded at the Sundance Film Festival, and widely touted by executive producer and political naïf, Robert Redford, follows spoiled rich kid Che's months-long trek, at age 23, across South America with an older pal named Alberto Granado (Rodrigo De la Serna), 29. The film, while filled with beautiful vistas of the countryside, is not particularly well shot by director Walter Salles nor cinematographer Eric Gautier, as there is none of the lingering sumptuousness that one finds in Lawrence Of Arabia, nor Kundun, films made by filmic masters like David Lean and Martin Scorsese. Instead, we get filmic postcards, not engaging realities. The framing of the shots sometimes seems as if it were done by a tourist who was in a hurry to get through whatever area he was traveling through. It also plumbs virtually every cliché of the two genres it inhabits- the buddy film and the coming of age road film. On the buddy side you have handsome, serious, empathetic Che, who-like George Washington, cannot tell a lie- he rips a doctor's poorly worded novel after his pal praises I- telling the old man to stick to medicine (would that someone had told Che the same thing!), and the chubby, fast-talking sidekick, Alberto, on a continual poon hunt. They get in to wacky adventures, constantly crash their motorcycle, and escape disaster by the skins of their teeth. On the road picture side, Che falls in love with a beautiful girl, but breaks her heart, the two meet strange people and grow up, chase girls, and idyllic vistas inspire the duo to talk like a bad screenwriter's imagination of what depth is, especially when at Maachu Picchu. If this insipidity is what Screenwriter's 101 feels reconstructed conversations should be, well....yeesh. In short, this is one foreign film whose subtitles do not matter vis-à-vis dubbing because they are bad either way.... Despite being made by a Brazilian filmmaker, this film is thoroughly Hollywood, and bound to polarize. Simpleminded Leftists have and will praise it to the hilt, despite its manifest flaws, all because they will not bother to check out the facts. Rightists will damn the film, sight unseen, thereby missing the chance to rip its poor artistry and only justify the many delusions of their enemies, by showing them they are correct that Rightists cannot separate art from reality, either. And so it goes....but, at least, I recognize such things. If the film did so I would not have to state it.

September 19, 2008

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