Before he was executed by a Bolivian firing squad in 1967, Argentina's Ernesto Che Guevara had become (at the side of Fidel Castro) an icon of guerrilla warfare, a killer in a beret who celebrated hatred as the key to revolution. That image of Che (a name he acquired later in life) has been co-opted by everyone from rockers to ad whores. But you won't find him in The Motorcycle Diaries, a mesmerizing look at an asthmatic, rich-boy medical student in the act of discovering his insurgent spirit.

T…

Because Che Guevara is often reduced to a T-shirt logo, this road movie has great value in presenting his 1952 trip with cousin Alberto Granado through South America. The two begin as patrician students, but after they witness the lives of indigenous people savaged by a Peruvian mining company and live in a leper colony, the seeds of Che's revolutionary postscript are sown. Gael Garc'a Bernal shines as Guevara, an asthmatic who could never get the hang of the mambo.