Cuba (1979)

That was an excellent one.

Stylish but barely mediocre overall

Load of rubbish!!

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

This film is laughably bad. In the scene in the restaurant Sean Connery and Brooke Adams are clearly at a loss for words. This scene is obviously unscripted and they are making up the dialog and not doing very well either! The entire picture falls apart in the last fifteen minutes with silly and uncoordinated action being filmed just to fill up the running time. I am sure that the actors (and this picture has a good cast) would like to forget that this flick was in their filmography. The dialog is silly, the action is senseless, the relationships unbelievable. The director has a lot to answer for. A waste of good film.

(Some Spoilers) The days are not only numbered for the year 1958 but also for the Batista regime running Cuba as well. With the Cuban rebels lead by the "Bearded One", Fidel Castro, streaming out of the Mestra Serria Mountains and linking up with thousands of supporters in the big cities like Havana and Santiago. Batista and his gang are making every attempt to get out of the island with all the loot that can carry before the rebels take over the Havana airport, Batista & Co.only escape route, and put them in front of a firing squad. In the middle of all this chaos British mercenary Maj.Robert Dapes, Sean Connery, is hired by the Batista government to help steam the rebel tide. Arriving in Havana Robert finds that there's more then a revolution going on in Cuba. There's the stunning and beautiful Alexandra Lopez de Pulido, Brooks Adams,there for whom he's carried a torch for over fifteen years, since he was a British soldier in North Africa back in WWII.Robert realizes right away that the situation is hopeless for the government forces and plans to get out of the country as soon as he can. Yet he's torn with fleeing Cuba an at the same time leaving his former, and now rediscovered, lover Alexandra behind. Alexandra is married to wealthy and politically connected Cuban Juan Pulido, Chris Sarandon,who besides being a good for nothing spoiled rich boy is also cheating on her. Juan is having an affair with the sexy Therese Mederos, Lon Etta McKee, who works in his cigar factory as a tobacco roller. With everything falling apart in the confusion There's younger brother Julio, Danny De La Paz, who's a Castro supporter. Julio is out to kill Juan for his disrespecting his sister by having her treated like she's a hooker. Robert tries to get Alexandra to come with him out of the war-torn island nation but she decides to stay in her beloved Cuba and face whatever the coming Castro regime has to offer her. With Robert leaving on the last plane out of the now rebel-controlled Havana Airport we see Alexandra, on the ground, in tears watching him leave Cuba as well as her heart forever. As for Alexandra's cheating husband Juan he get's just what's coming to him at the conclusion of the movie. The film "Cuba" shows the audience just how things were on that island nation back in late 1958 and up to New Years Day 1959 when the Castro rebels took over the country. The last days of the Batista Regime were so weird and surrealistic that most of the people there couldn't fathom just what was happening and acted as if everything was just normal; as their world was slowly collapsing all around them.

Richard Nester's 'Cuba' is set in the 1950's just in the Civil war against Batista's government... Sean Connery stars as a free British counter-terrorist whom Batista's associates hope will help them beat Castro's revolutionaries...Connery quickly figures out, almost as soon as he landed in the exotic and dangerous island, that the revolution will succeed and replace one elite with another... He gets much more interest in following an old sweetheart, and when the two see each other, memories of his first love affair come flooding back...Connery begins to remember when he was once deeply and ridiculously in love with her... The 'woman in red' that passed before his eyes in Havana's airport terminal was the most exotic, breath-stopping creature he had ever known... Now she is Alexandra Pulido (Brooke Adams), a highly ambitious woman who runs a cigar factory while her husband flirts with other women...Chris Sarandon is the profligate son of one of Cuba's wealthiest men, and the charming playboy in the romantic triangle who knows everything about Havana, 'every casino, every table, and every bed in it!' Martin Balsam is the general in the corrupt Batista regime, who intends to ask Castro to 'get rid of the Communists.'Hector Elizondo is the junior officer who realizes late in life why few were sorry about the fall of Batista... Jack Weston is the fat American businessman impressed by the cigar factory... Lonette McKee is the ardent lover who rejects all the ways of behavior in Cuba... Danny De la Paz is the very bad brother with a handgun license...Alejandro Rey is a money-grubbing menace who puts his personal ambition over public safety... Denholm Elliott is the soldier of fortune who buys an old airplane so quickly... Walter Gotell is the unfeeling father who is quite separate from the businesses run by his daughter in law... In 'Cuba', Richard Lester reveals a likable if none too demanding talent for adventure and love... His film lacks the detailed exposition of the many twists and turns of Michael Curtiz's 'Casablanca.' There is no club so well organized in his movie, no open arena of conspiracy, counterspies, secret plans, black market transactions, no true democrat with women, and no traditional woman enclosed by two rivals...

Set during the days leading up to Castro's revolution in 1959, "Cuba" is a wide-ranging character study that also happens to be a convincing portrayal of the unrest -- political, social and otherwise -- surrounding that event. It also has a great cast attached to it, including Sean Connery, Brooke Adams, Chris Sarandon, Martin Balsam, Denholm Elliott and Jack Weston (who is particularly good as the opportunistic American businessman). And look for David Rappaport -- future Time Bandit -- in a small role (sorry, bad joke) as the cigar factory overseer.This was director Richard Lester's fifth and final film with writer Charles Wood, a collaboration which produced such 1960s classics as "The Knack," "Help!," "How I Won the War" and "The Bed Sitting Room." "Cuba," which came ten years later, can most definitely be added to that list.