Yet something of the Guevara mythology remains. Che is an icon partly because he died young, martyred in Bolivia, and thus remains symbolic of all the passion of revolution without necessarily any of the consequences. There is little here to shatter the myth, and much to add to it: the worst quality about Guevara shown here is his ruthless honesty, while his indisputable charisma lights up every frame.

The Motorcycle Diaries can sometimes hammer its social agenda too deeply, perhaps most overtly through Salles' technique of pausing to depict indigenous people through photojournalistic black-and-white freeze frames. But it's first and foremost an adventure, one in which we as an audience stumble, much as Guevara himself, into a world of injustice we had not expected to find. It's a film that simultaneously manages to show the joys of the reckless abandon of youth and the deeper, perhaps more satisfying concerns of maturity, without disparaging either.

(Taken from Delta Sierra Arts)