The central pair's shattering, once-in-a-lifetime passion cries out for more urgency and emotional power.
Havana (1990)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:23
Fresh:4
Rotten:19
Average Rating:3.7/10
Runtime: 2 hrs 25 mins
Genre: Dramas
Synopsis: Director Sydney Pollack and Robert Redford join forces to tell the story of high-rolling gambler Jack Weil. Hoping to be pushed to the edge in a place ripe for action, Weil heads to Havana at... Director Sydney Pollack and Robert Redford join forces to tell the story of high-rolling gambler Jack Weil. Hoping to be pushed to the edge in a place ripe for action, Weil heads to Havana at Christmastime, 1958. Cuba is experiencing prerevolutionary rumblings, and he has a theory that gamblers are more adventuresome when the bullets start flying. Once he arrives, he ends up falling in with revolutionaries and meets a glamorous Swede named Bobby Duran (Lena Olin) and her wealthy husband, revolutionary leader Arturo Duran. Suddenly Jack finds himself making radical gestures, braving financial loss and life-threatening situations in an attempt to save her from dictator Batista's men. Sexual attraction slowly leads the way to political awareness, matching the amount of time it takes for the beginnings of social change. Pollack and Redford's seventh collaboration has a dramatic romantic sweep that's augmented by crisp luminous images that create a sense of heightened reality. [More]
Starring: Robert Redford, Lena Olin, Raul Julia, Alan Arkin
Starring: Robert Redford, Lena Olin, Raul Julia, Alan Arkin, Tomas Milian, Richard Farnsworth, Mark Rydell
Director: Sydney Pollack
Director: Sydney Pollack
Screenwriter: Judith Rascoe, David Rayfiel
Producer: Sydney Pollack, Richard Roth
Reviews for Havana
Handsomely produced, with a typically mesmerizing performance by Redford, alas this fails to exploit its intriguing political background and ends up being more of a routine and ineffective romance.
Elaborate visual mounting and iconographic placement of the romantic leads are the movie's preoccupation, with the overthrow of Batista merely providing local color.
Unfortunately, against that impressive backdrop, Pollack mounts a film that is lifeless and slow-moving, offering neither a compelling love story nor a tense tale of a city in turmoil.
Director Sydney Pollack and star Robert Redford have lost their normally dependable quality touch as they slog through a notably uncompelling $45 million-plus tale of a gringo caught up in the Cuban revolution.
The glittering decadence of this culture on the verge of collapse is in fact the film's most fascinating aspect, and Mr. Pollack has re-created it extravagantly.
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