Rumours abound about the inclusion of Che, Steven Soderbergh’s butt-numbing two part biopic of revolutionary hero Ernesto "Che" Guevara in competition in Cannes. Until days before the festival selection was announced, the trade papers were confidently asserting that Che would not be ready to screen. Its inclusion, rumoured to be a result of intensive last minute lobbying from festival head Thierry Fremeaux, came as a surprise to many and although it is not presented as such, it seems fair to assume that the flawed but occasionally fascinating film which screened at the festival is a work in progress.

The hefty running time – four hours and twenty-eight minutes – cast a pall over the proceedings (“This had better be good Steven” growled one critic as the lights went down), as did the fact that the festival saw fit to schedule the screening so it clashed with the Champions League final. Starring Benicio Del Toro in the central role, the film is divided into two distinct chapters which are intended to be released as separate pictures – although whether they ultimately are may depend on the response from the Cannes audience.

The first part launches the audience onto a choppy sea of snatched glimpses of Che the noble idealist; Che the polemicist; Che the soldier. It’s not an elegant piece of filmmaking. Soderbergh hurtles from pivotal moment to pivotal moment – Che’s 1964 visit to New York, where he addressed the UN, is spliced together with a pre-revolutionary Guevara debating politics over dinner. It’s a jittery, scattershot approach which goes some way to exploring Guevara’s evolution from Argentinean idealist to Cuban revolutionary hero, but reveals very little about who he was as a person. It seems that Soderbergh went in search of the man but, like so many others, was blinded by the legend.

The film gathers momentum an hour or so in, when it settles down to the serious business of revolution. The battle sequences, like the rest of the film shot by Soderbergh himself on the new digital RED camera, are exhilarating; the brothers-at-arms camaraderie is engaging. But it’s a very uncritical portrait of Guevara who presides, Solomon-like, over the petty squabbles and misbehaviour of guerrillas who shuffle like guilty schoolboys in his presence.

The second half of the film, telling of the ill-fated campaign in Bolivia where Guevara met his death, is thematically more interesting, dealing as it does with the failure and disappointment of a man who had been lauded as an icon. It’s constructed as a slow-burning thriller, although the fact that Che’s fate is so well-known takes much of the tension out of the mix. Perhaps as a consequence of already having ploughed through several hours of Guevara, this second half seems to take a very long time to grind towards its inevitable conclusion. It’s a bit of a downer, frankly. And yet it’s here that Del Toro really gets his teeth into the role, winkling into the vulnerabilities and doubts of the man.

In its current four and a half hour incarnation, Che is a hard slog that doesn’t repay the investment in time. But I have no doubt that out of it will come one, or possibly two, rather more successful movies.

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