Rating: Summary: Snapshot of Cuba during the Castro revolution Review: This little gem of a movie hasn't lost its interest 25 years after it was shot. It offers a snapshot of Cuba during the 1959 revolution led by Fidel Castro that replaced the corrupt regime of Fulgencio Batista.
"Cuba" was made at Shepperton Studios, which is less well known than Ealing Studios, but produced a series of high-quality, low-budget films. This semi-documentary showcases Sean Connery as a British soldier-of-fortune who has been invited to Havana to rid the country of Castro's rebels. He recognizes an unstoppable force and spends more time trying to woo a former girlfriend (Brooke Adams) from her toy boy husband than dealing with the rebels. It's not much of a story: Connery and Adams aren't required to provide much more than eye-candy while the real action takes place in the background.
There are some wonderful vignettes of the wealthy, pampered Spanish ruling class with their beautiful mansions, fashionable clothing and decadent entertainment. The mixed-race general population, in contrast, lives in squalor. In one scene groups of women wait outside a prison every day hoping for news of their disappeared husbands and fathers. There's not much doubt where the director's sympathies lie. And there lies both the strength and weakness of the movie. Your chances of enjoying the movie depend entirely on your own politics. If you see Fidel Castro as a communist stooge, the slight plot isn't nearly enough to compensate for the movie's propagandistic tendencies. If your sympathies are with the victims of the dictatorial Batista regime, "Cuba" is an eye into the past.
Rating: Summary: Stands the Test of Time Review: This movie is on any list of my family's 10 favorite movies. We saw it in the theater when it was new, and hoarded the homemade videotape made from a TV broadcast, which was a major event in this household. Finally on DVD - it's wonderful that now we can see it in both widescreen and non. The film rewards repeated viewing, since eventually you realize that all the comic business ties in with all the main plot lines. I think this mixture of relevant-to-the-plot background comic bits throughout a film must be Richard Lester's forte, since he does it so well in all of his movies. Here the comic bits are superb - there really are no loose ends! Every character, every actor is wonderful, even the bit parts. Jack Weston gives one of the best performances of his life. It lingers in the imagination as THE picture of life at every stratum in Cuba at the end of the 1950s, even though (as has been observed in other reviews) the locations were really in Spain. The colors, the ambience, even the music - wonderful. It's obvious to me, anyway, that this movie stands the test of time...it has survived to be reborn in DVD format. Thank goodness! - Because it deserves to be remembered and enjoyed.
Rating: Summary: Stands the Test of Time Review: This movie is on any list of my family's 10 favorite movies. We saw it in the theater when it was new, and hoarded the homemade videotape made from a TV broadcast, which was a major event in this household. Finally on DVD - it's wonderful that now we can see it in both widescreen and non. The film rewards repeated viewing, since eventually you realize that all the comic business ties in with all the main plot lines. I think this mixture of relevant-to-the-plot background comic bits throughout a film must be Richard Lester's forte, since he does it so well in all of his movies. Here the comic bits are superb - there really are no loose ends! Every character, every actor is wonderful, even the bit parts. Jack Weston gives one of the best performances of his life. It lingers in the imagination as THE picture of life at every stratum in Cuba at the end of the 1950s, even though (as has been observed in other reviews) the locations were really in Spain. The colors, the ambience, even the music - wonderful. It's obvious to me, anyway, that this movie stands the test of time...it has survived to be reborn in DVD format. Thank goodness! - Because it deserves to be remembered and enjoyed.
Rating: Summary: Impressions. Review: very few of us now a days, know of the incidents and life in cuba and why fidel castro took power, from a corrupt gangster style goverment of the baustista goverment. sean connery plays a british mercenary, trying to scope out the situation for the in power goverment , and re-live a old fling with a old flame from north afrika, ww2 days. chris sarandon plays the handsome husband of brooke adams, who's family is that of the elite and powerful. see this movie and undersatnd the life that once was.
Rating: Summary: historical drama Review: very few of us now a days, know of the incidents and life in cuba and why fidel castro took power, from a corrupt gangster style goverment of the baustista goverment. sean connery plays a british mercenary, trying to scope out the situation for the in power goverment , and re-live a old fling with a old flame from north afrika, ww2 days. chris sarandon plays the handsome husband of brooke adams, who's family is that of the elite and powerful. see this movie and undersatnd the life that once was.
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