Cuba (1979)

Excellent but underrated film

A Disappointing Continuation

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

This movie is set during the build up to the Cuban revolution in 1959.Former British Major Robert Dapes arrives in Cuba.He is there to train the corrupt General Batista's army against Castro's guerrillas.He also meets his former lover, Alaxandra Lopez de Pulido, who's married now to a man called Juan Pulido.But the old love still hasn't died.Cuba from 1979 is directed by Richard Lester.Sean Connery, who turned 80 earlier this week, is brilliant as Robert Dapes.There's a little bit of James Bond in that character, I noticed.Brooke Adams does very fine job as Alexandra.Chris Sarandon is great as her lousy husband Juan.Jack Weston is terrific as Jack Gutman.Hector Elizondo gives a great performance as Capt.Raphael Ramirez.Denholm Elliot is very good as Donald Skinner.Martin Balsam is marvelous as Gen. Bello.Those scenes where there's some bloodshed are the most memorable.In one of them people are dining together in their finest outfits and the gunmen arrive.In the end we see some actual footage of the revolution and the rise of Fidel Castro.Not a masterpiece but a movie worth checking out.

As a connoisseur of very bad cinema, I haven't laughed so hard in a long time. For all involved, this star-studded catastrophe must either have been a desperate misery, or a sad, resigned joke to make.Somehow permitted to be shot on location in legitimately atmospheric locations in Havana, this turkey seems to have been enacted within an alternate universe, where each and every person is, for lack of a more eloquent designation, flat-out stupid.Nearly every shot and line of dialog contains truly jaw-dropping anachronisms, incongruities, and incomprehensible plot gaps.The characters, each the epitome of stereotyping (as well as typecasting) are quite completely air-headed. With the lonely exception of Sean Connery, whose apparently sincere effort sadly amounted to no particular improvement to the results, all the actors as well as the writers and director phoned in their work, apparently via low-fidelity satellite phones.Someday I hope to read someone's memoirs about the making of _Cuba_. Meanwhile I'd actually recommend it to anyone with an appreciation for Bad Cinema. It richly earns my vote for inclusion in the list of 50 worst films of all time; the two stars in my 2/10 rating are due to the true amusement value of pretentious cinematic drek of the very first caliber.

There is an error in the movie. Someone in The Prop Department placed a 1961 Chrysler New Yorker 4-Dr. Hardtop in what supposed to be December, 1958 Havana. However the actor who played Batista didn't look like him & the scene where Batista left was a good scene. So in all it was a good movie. Also Castro's Rebels were portrayed as Saints and there were other things that were good like an ambush at dinner scene & also Julio trying to be a hero and keeps killing the wrong people but in the end gets the guy who was messing with his sister. Sean Connery did a good job playing a guy who wondering if he's fighting for the wrong team. However The 1961 Chrysler shown in the movie was an error & shouldn't have been in the movie that is supposed to be Havana, December, 1958 to January, 1959. So that's it for now.

An enjoyable thriller, which although filmed in Spain, manages to capture the atmosphere and lunacy of the last days of Batista's dictatorship perfectly. Probably a contractual purposes project on the behalf of director Lester, he manages to inject just enough of his own idiosyncratic style to lift this adventure flick out of the run of the mill. Connery is totally convincing in his role as Brit counter-insurgency advisor/mercenary. Brook Adams is stunning. Good anglo-american supporting cast. Plot begins to lose its impetus about a reel before the end, and at a running time of nearly two hours, is overlong. But well worth renting the video. Socialists will not find its political interpetation of events offensive, but may be puzzled or angered by the soundtrack over the final titles - as a victorious Fidel approaches the podium, chants of 'Fidel! Fidel!' are over dubbed with a Nuremberg chorus of 'Sieg Heil!'. Discuss.