The Lost City (2005)

Such a frustrating disappointment

Great Film overall

Admirable film.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

As a Cuban American who came over as a child with his parents in the mid 60's I heard all too often the stories of loss, pain, and the horrors witnessed and experienced by my family under the ruthless Castro regime. We lost the future my parents had worked so hard to setup for us. My parents had to leave everything behind, their business, their careers, their family and friends, to start a new from the bottom all while in their 50's. They arrived in a Country they had always loved from afar with high hopes, abandoning all they new to flee political persecution. They came with open hearts to build a new path, focused on insuring success for us their children. The Lost City captures the plight of Cubans from that era so accurately that it felt if it were telling my story. Andy Garcia does an amazing job conveying the loss so many experienced to then be welcomed to our new home, a place were we were given a new opportunity, not handed easy street, but given an honest chance to work hard and to become part of this great United States. Garcia a Cuban immigrant himself knows the pain, the loss, and is able to transfer that to film and to the viewer in a very effective way. My parents taught us to expect nothing but work hard to be worthy of this wonderful gift America had offered to us. They taught us to be respectful, and be worthy of America. This is the greatest nation on Earth and the Lost City reminds me and should all that that which we love, our home, our country, can be lost if we are not careful.

I was looking forward to seeing this film, mainly because this is a subject that seems to have been avoided by film makers.I did not care which side of the political spectrum was portrayed, but was expecting some entertainment, which at first was promising, but then faded into a plot that was hard to follow, and got boring. To list Dustin Hoffmann as a major character was wrong, considering he virtually had but two cameo appearances in the whole movie, and Bill Murray's character did not do anything for him to even enjoy being in the credits.In all, it lacked everything that I would have expected from this cast.

As a moderately interesting melodrama, this has enough defects—it's overlong, slow, diluted, it truly lacks a style and some brio. It's very unsubtle and pedestrian, it uses a tourist almanac 'beauty' as from the travel commercials—something radically phony and displeasing. The content is minimal. Yet I somewhat enjoyed it—Murray's role, Hoffman's cameo, the political decency, the women's charm, the nice wardrobes.As a director, Garcia is certainly not very inspired. He falls in the worst clichés and has a rather poor notion of cinema.Hoffman has two small scenes, as Mayer Lansky, the controversial, if you wish, character.For Murray, they had a routine: Murray's usual character.Murray does the bitterness of the sad clown, vaguely affable ,vaguely blasé. His irony is fundamentally despising. In fact, he's only asked to simply recycle this routine. His intelligence is an earthly and sarcastic, offensive, unsparing one.Murray's irony is malicious and uncharitable. It's cynical, unfriendly and rather insulting. It's irresistibly funny. Maybe some these particularities partly explain his sinuous career. Murray, already quite old looking, does a very funny supporting role as an anonymous prankster and wisecracker. It's perhaps the finest thing in the movie. Otherwise, the story is, as I said, quite thin and underdeveloped, and the movie evolves like a falsely beautiful shape, truly empty. It's not atmospheric, nor lyrical, nor whatever Garcia fancied it should be. It's not the poem of a city, and it's conspicuously ineffective at giving a taste of the city. It's drowned in conventionalism and cheap sentimentality—though, of course, better than the exotic—politic rubbish Hollywood is usually churning out—stuff like CONSTANT GARDNER or LAST KING OF Scotland …--THE LOST CITY is not that stupid, not that boring. Otherwise, the movie has little to say about anything. It's a merely decorative product. Both Murray and Hoffman (who only passes by) deserved better.Watch it, fellows, at least for Murray's supporting role!

Very very boring!Despite some historical background, with some real scenes, including executions at the "Paredon", the central characters are very unreal. Fico is portrayed as dreamer with no sins, and so is his nightclub. The dialogs are definitively to long. The development of the movie is to slow, and it will be hard to stay awake 143 minutes watching this boring stuff. What is Bill Murray doing there? Why Aurora get suddenly so deeply engaged with Fidel's politics, when in the life time of her husband she wouldn't know anything about the revolution?Beside the critics, the movie has some nice scenes, and the short acting of Dustin Hoffman as Mayer Lansky is quite good.I give 4/10. If you like Cuban musicals, may be you will give the movie a better rating.