Che on screen

Forty-one years after his death, Ernesto Che Guevara, an Argentinean who originally trained as a doctor, continues to retain his remarkable iconic status.

After meeting Fidel Castroin Mexico, he joined that indestructible rebel's 26th of July Movement and, despite frequent bouts of asthma, rose to become the military mastermind behind the Cuban revolution. Following the establishment of Castro's regime, Che set off to forward further revolutions in the Congo and Bolivia. His death during that last campaign only served to fuel the cult, and versions of Che have turned up in a handful of movies over the intervening decades.

Omar Sharifoffered a notoriously stinky take on Guevara opposite Jack Palance's Castro in Richard Fleischer's catastrophic 1969 flop Che!(Check out that exclamation point.)

The next major incarnation came nearly 30 years later, with Antonio Banderas's romantic flourishes as Che in Alan Parker's surprisingly tolerable film adaptation of Evita. Tim Rice had always been a tad evasive about the character's identity in his book for the original show (no surname is used), but you don't have to be an expert on Marxist history to appreciate the reference.

Before the release of Steven Soderbergh's film, the most successful depiction of Che was that by the dreamy Gael García Bernal, playing the young idealist in Walter Salles's delightful The Motorcycle Diaries.

Look hard and you will also find obscure performances by Eduardo Noriega(in Josh Evans's unloved Che Guevara) and Jsu Garcia(in Andy Garcia's dodgy The Lost City). But Irish audiences will hold a special place in their hearts for Karl Shiel's smashing performance in Anthony Byrne's agreeably eccentric 2003 short Meeting Che Guevara & the Man from Maybury Hill. Che's granny was from Galway, you know.