Coming attractions

Director Steven Soderbergh's new feature film, Che, has met with mixed reviews at the Cannes Film Festival, with some critics apparently unhappy about the length of the four-hour-long, two-part biopic.

Regardless, the publicity blitz for the film has got under way ... and like old Che, it's a case of all guns blazing, comrades.

The director and his leading stars have been happily providing plenty of colourful quotes to the media, along with their own versions of the Che "legend", making all those predictable references to the guerrilla leader as an "icon" and "idolised idealist".

At the forefront of all this drivel is Benicio Del Toro, the Puerto Rican-born actor who plays Ernesto Che Guevara. According to this Reuters report, Del Toro portrays Guevara as "a courageous man of unswerving principle who inspires fear and respect among his men and ordinary people and administers often brutal justice".

You've been warned.