Pretty Good

Better Late Then Never

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Cuba (1979)Plot In A Paragraph: Robert Dapes (Connery) a British mercenary (with surprisingly high principles given his job) arrives in pre-Revolution Cuba to help train the corrupt General Batista's army against Castro's guerrillas while he also romances Alexandra Pulido (Brooke Adams), a former lover now married to a plantation owner.In his last movie of the 1970's Sean Connery reunited with director Richard Lester who once again produces an uneven movie. It's almost as if he changed his mind mid filming about what type of movie he was trying to make. Connery (who looks great in his tan suit and fedora) who has saved worse movies than this, dominates every scene he is in, but seriously has his work cut out here. It's all just so bland and uninteresting, and it's dialogue would be rejected by the bosses of day time soap opera writers. It's worth noting Connery's future Indiana Jones co-str Denholm Elliot Jack Weston and Hector Elizondo all pop up in supporting roles. Other than that, there is nothing worth seeing in the cliché ridden snooze fest.A few years ago, I paid a silly price for the DVD on import, as I had never seen it( and it was missing from my collection. I wish I'd saved my money, as you can buy it considerably cheaper these days. Connery ended the 70's with a whimper rather than a bang, as Cuba bombed at the box office. Things would not really improve for him for quite a while, as for director Lester however, he went on to take over from Richard Donner and completed the filming on Superman 2.

British mercenary Sean Connery arrives in Havana on the eve of the Revolution of 1959, hired by the Batista regime to defeat it. How he assesses the Batista regime is done largely by facial cues to his military guide, but we are (somehow) given to believe he sees the Batista regime is about to collapse. He finds a former teenage lover of his there (Brooke Adams)who is now married to the son of cigar-factory wealth (Chris Sarandon) Does she escape the revolution? Do we really want her to? I liked its brightly-lit brittle realist Havana hotel scenes, but I liked them in HAVANA with Robert Redford even more. In the simplest old-Hollywood terms, winners are winners, losers, losers. Castro obviously wins. You don't have a major star like Connery walk away from the people we ourselves are supposed to sympathize with, but do we really expect him to join the Revolution? Has Lester ever been interviewed about this film anomaly? I wonder where Connery stood/stands on the Cuban Revolution, & Cuba now, likewise Redford.

Plot: A British mercenary is hired by the Cuban government to defeat Fidel Castro's insurgency but finds an old love instead.If there is such a thing as failing with verve, thenthis film does it. It has an interesting concept - counterinsurgency expert fresh from Malaya tries to help Batista's regime - which is swiftly abandoned in favour of a rekindled romance with an old flame. Finally the revolution occurs and the movie descends into a few mediocre action sequences. Pre-revolutionary Cuba is splendidly re-created in all its glamour and glitz; seething with vice, poverty and intrigue. Sadly the script isn't all that convincing and seems to take ages to get anywhere. A handful of stand out scenes and the brilliantly conjured atmosphere can't conceal the lack of forward momentum, although this is partly imposed by the tragic nature of events (Connery's character can't stop the rebellion and doesn't get the girl). Worth one viewing.

Set during the days leading up to Castro's revolution in 1959, "Cuba" is a wide-ranging character study that also happens to be a convincing portrayal of the unrest -- political, social and otherwise -- surrounding that event. It also has a great cast attached to it, including Sean Connery, Brooke Adams, Chris Sarandon, Martin Balsam, Denholm Elliott and Jack Weston (who is particularly good as the opportunistic American businessman). And look for David Rappaport -- future Time Bandit -- in a small role (sorry, bad joke) as the cigar factory overseer.This was director Richard Lester's fifth and final film with writer Charles Wood, a collaboration which produced such 1960s classics as "The Knack," "Help!," "How I Won the War" and "The Bed Sitting Room." "Cuba," which came ten years later, can most definitely be added to that list.