Havana

It's 15 years later, but seeing this film for the first time, I was surprised by its intensity, beauty, realism and acting. This is two thumbs up from my corner.

I totally believed both Olin and Redford. Yes, they're both very good looking people, but more than that, they both convey intelligence and real emotion. Their performances were relatively restrained and in my opinion that's a good thing.

As a person interested in politics and history, I found the film interesting and balanced especially considering that this was a studio product. This film made me want to learn more about Batista, Castro and Cuba's move for independence.

Many viewers have noted that Havana is essentially Casablanca in the Caribbean, which is certainly true. But I found the same apocalyptic tension in Havana as in Casablanca, although not quite as effective the second time around. Others criticized the dialogue. I thought it was exceptionally mature, and subtle, which may be what threw some of the reviewers in this forum, who maybe would have wanted something more bombastic. The plot development was very compressed - things had to happen very quickly, and so some thought they happened far too quickly. But I thought Olin in particular showed all of the pain and turmoil necessary to make her quick transitions of emotion believable. You have to believe that the times were so tumultuous that people had to adjust very quickly to changing circumstances. As for Jack falling in love with Bobby so fast, that's entirely believable, and the look they exchanged at the party where Jack meets her husband for the first time was our signal that this love affair was happening, and was one of those insane passions that overtake people, not infrequently, and in this case, again, against the apocalyptic backdrop of this incipient revolution, which made all involved feel very much at loose ends, ready for, or dreading, the vast changes about to happen to them. I though the end was too dragged out, but other than that, the movie mostly plausible.

The island of Cuba is a long way from Morocco, but in Sydney Pollack's film of the same name the city of Havana isn't too far removed from 'Casablanca'. The two films share a similar exotic locale, the same shady intrigue, and an all too familiar bittersweet romance. All that's missing are Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet, but what's surprising about Pollack's film is how well it stands up under the comparison. Robert Redford portrays a tough and charismatic (if slightly disreputable) gambler who drifts into the decadent Cuban capital during the last, desperate days of the Battista regime, and it's a pleasure to watch him playing, for once, a character without a built-in halo. The foreign intrigue, played against a background of political unrest, is perfectly suited to the swinging tropical setting, but the romance between Redford and beautiful revolutionary Lena Olin isn't as convincing. Don't blame the talented cast; the script lets them down too often during the last half of the film, undermining an otherwise attractive and entertaining bit of high-grade, escapist fluff.

How does a cool professional gambler show passion? He gives up the Big Game to rescue his beloved. How can a passionate woman reconcile the two loves of her life--the noble hero and his cause and the man who makes her feel most like a woman? Yes, it's Casablanca revisited. And Lena Olin portrays her ambivalence as ably as her Swedish compatriot, Ingrid Bergman. Fault the script for not delivering the depth of Casablanca, the humor--Alan Arkin could have been the equal of Claude Rains but didn't get the lines. But the cinematography makes pre-revolutionary Havana palpable, in its glamour and seaminess, its whiff of a bygone era. Who wouldn't want to drive a Cadillac convertible onto the ferry at Key West and debark in Havana?

Jack Weil, played by Robert Redford, feels at home in this corrupt city… He's a professional gambler looking for the game of his life… He played in every Elks Club and Moose Hall in America… He remembers every hand of every game and now he wants a shot, only one shot in Havana…

But while he is on the verge of winning everything Bobby Duran (Lena Olin) has lost all she ever knew… Olin plays the wife of a Cuban revolutionary, Raul Julia… Bobby has nothing to lose or to protect… And in a super-natural and strange way Jack reaches her… And so, as Cuba crumbles Jack is drawn in Bobby's world of the revolutionaries and, in one crucial moment he sees himself he must choose between the greatest card game of his life and the woman he loves…

There's a kind of exotic combination between Redford and Olin's characters… Between Redford's very American, blond, golden look and Olin's dark, intense Swedish expression…

Sydney Pollack's "Havana" is a love story that takes place during the week of Christmas, 1958 which was the last week Batista was in power before Castro came in… It was the last week of this kind of a circus that Havana was… An attractive city full of gambling, of burlesque, of every kind of hedonistic pleasure possible