Havana

Sydney Pollack had some substantial films to his name but this his comeback after a six year layoff (his previous film had been Out Of Africa) is a far cry from his best work.  Indeed, he never made significant film after this. A lot of money has been spent on re-creating Havana, on the eve of the fall of Batista's regime in 1958 but frankly its wasted given the tepid and derivative screenplay by Judith Rascoe and David Rayfiel. 

Robert Redford  plays Jack Weil, a professional gambler heading to Havana to set up a big game who gets involved with a beautiful woman, (Lena Olin) who is married to a revolutionary activist (Raul Julia).  Jack has to chose between the woman or the game.  Yes, you know what happens.

The core problem is script which starts off heavy-handedly by putting together the dashing but rather weather-worn Redford with the appealing (and much younger) Olin, thereby telling us 50% of the story, and progressively morphs into a poor relative of Casablanca, the writers presumably acknowledging their debt by the film's title and asking us to accept this as some kind of re-working of the 1942 classic. 

Needless to say Pollack-regular Redford is effective as the unflappable adventurer-gambler but symptomatic of the film’s superficial politics, Olin is an incongruously glamorous presence. Even worse, there is little in the way of chemistry between the two and Jack’s remarkably rapid abandonment of his self-interested point-of-view  under the influence of his desire for this supposed revolutionary and her similarly remarkably rapid forgetting of her husband and his revolutionary legacy has to be taken on trust.

Around this core romance the usual roster of white-suited, pomaded Latin American right-wing villains and khaki-clad revolutionaries perform their usual narrative functions.  The only really interesting performances come from Alan Arkin as a cynical casino owner and briefly, Mark Rydell as Meyer Lansky, a touch which brings to mind the Cuban section of The Godfather II.

Indeed, the film is at its best in capturing pre-revolutionary Havana (it was actually filmed in the Dominican Republic at the cost of $45m) with its institutionalize corruption, around-the-clock gambling and love for sale on every street.  Unfortunately, that is not enough to sustain our interest.

 

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