Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #982 in DVD
• Released on: 2007-09-17
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Format: PAL
• Original language: Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 120 minutes

Synopsis

In 1952, a young medical student and a biochemist from Argentina set off on a road trip across South America. As the two young men straddled their beaten up motorcycle, they talked in awed tones of the incredible sights they were about to experience. The record of their trip may have disappeared into the ether, had one of the riders departing on that fateful day not been the future insurrectionary figurehead of the Cuban revolution, Ernesto 'Che' Guevara (Gael Garcia Bernal). The young Che's travelling companion was his best friend, Alberto Granado (Rodrigo de la Serna), and their simple goal was to enjoy themselves and possibly meet some girls along the way.

As Ernesto and Alberto’s trip unfolds at the behest of their spluttering motorcycle, the boys begin to discover more about themselves than they ever imagined possible. Ernesto clings tightly to his ideals throughout, and delights in the opportunity to put them into practice. His refusal to spend the $20 given to him by his girlfriend, Chichina Ferreyra (Mia Maestro), constantly angers his travelling companion, as the two succumb to pangs of hunger. Ernesto's charitable nature comes to the fore when he reveals that he gave the money to a pair of out-of-work illegal immigrants.

The trip winds down as the friends offer their medical expertise to a leper colony in Peru, with the duo's youthful folly acquiescing to adulthood and the dawning realization of where they should head in life. Based on the books "The Motorcycle Diaries" (by Guevara) and "Travelling with Che Guevara" (by Granado), director Walter Salles ("Central Station") pulls some highly accomplished performances from his two leads. The South American landscape is breathtakingly captured on camera, with Salles vividly reproducing a continent beleaguered by poverty and disease, but containing a population in possession of an unshakeable sense of optimism--as beautifully personified by Guevara and Granado.