1990 Directed by Sydney Pollack
An American professional gambler named Jack Weil decides to visit Havana, Cuba to gamble. On the boat to Havana, he meets Roberta Duran, the wife of a revolutionary, Arturo. Shortly after their arrival, Arturo is taken away by the secret police, and Roberta is captured and tortured. Jack frees her, but she continues to support the revolution.
Robert Redford Lena Olin Alan Arkin Tomas Milian Daniel Davis Tony Plana Betsy Brantley Lise Cutter Richard Farnsworth Mark Rydell Vasek Simek Fred Asparagus Richard Portnow Dion Anderson Carmine Caridi James Medina Joe Lala Salvador Levy Bernie Pollack Owen Roizman Victor Rivers Alex Ganster René Monclova Miguel Ángel Suárez Dennis Farina Raúl Juliá Franklin Rodríguez
Havanna, Habana, Гавана, Хавана, 哈瓦那, Αβάνα, 하바나, Hawana, ハバナ
USAR
Germany12
Japan
Czechia15+
Czechia
Germany
Japan
USA
Action! - Lumet/Pollack: The Fight of the Century
Who knew? It turns out that Robert Redford's charm can take you so far.
On the one hand, the production of this picture is fantastic, with the background of a gambler who falls in love in Cuba on the eve of the Cuban revolution and featuring one of Dave Grusin's best works. In fact, the opening reminded me of something Martin Scorsese would do, with plenty of Casino vibes. And the acting is good. Unfortunately, it all goes downhill with a movie that should not be so long and is, at the end of the day, dull. Inert. Trite.
All in all, a film that wastes its great talent and work on a lousy script.
TODAY SCHEDULE
Murder On The Orient Express
Dog Day Afternoon
Havana
Diario de Motocicleta
Robert Redford went into the nineties on a mission and that mission was to be sexy as hell and only make movies about being sexy as hell and I appreciate it so much. Havana, Indecent Proposal, and Up Close & Personal are the holy trinity of Robert Redford sexual angst films.
Also, there’s a bullfighting poster hanging on the wall in Jack’s apartment that is almost exactly the same as the one hanging in the Bratter’s apartment in Barefoot in the Park and I like to think that Sydney Pollack put that there just for me.
Robert Redford is a gambler who has made his way to Cuba only to find himself smuggling revolutionary radio contraband on behalf of Lena Olin, whom he is attracted to. Redford is at first not interested in any cause—he just wants to amp up his playboy image and fool around—but he finds himself entangled with Olin whom wants to bring down the country’s fascist dictator Batista. As a Redford fan, I enjoyed him dressing up in fancy suits and ties to play up this smooth operator and cynic. But what we’re really weighed down here by is half-baked political drama in which that “historical importance” backdrop never becomes a clear foreground. Sydney Pollack cooks up some good scenes, but it’s a hazy picture throughout that never comes together as a whole. At 144 minutes, Havana also has too many scenes of Redford talking to variable distinguished gentlemen of Cuba, none of it thrusting the drama forward.
It could have been a weird entry for Sidney Pollack's filmography. I mean, having in account the political nature of the film. However, I found it to be much more a romantic film rather than a political one, and this is what makes sense considering the director. Robert Redford once again shows his abilities as an actor. There was a simple scene where this was confirmed, Jack is talking to Julio and clearly not paying any attention to the conversation and he does this thing were he looks to person just once in a while whilst paying attention to his surroundings which he really cares about. He moves ever so slightly until he can't take anymore and just goes and Julio follows him. I was very enthranced with the way he did it, as it felt so natural. It's a small thing regarding the whole film, but it was something that stuck with me.
I even read newspapers now.
Too little Raul Julia, too much Robert Redford in a threeway.
This is not a particularly well known Robert Redford-Sydney Pollack joint and the only reason I saw this is because of that poster. Doesn't it look like the most 90s, second hand bookstore, bootleg cover of a novel that is reprinted without the permission of the original imprint and had to make do with MS Paint level artwork and costs $1.99, filled with typos, and smudged print. Yeah, no way I can skip this.
Middling though the reviews were, I still found a lot to admire about this. The story is about an apolitical, hedonistic, professional gambler from United States who comes to Cuba…
Sydney Pollack was never shy about dragging out at best two hours worth of material to 2 ½, if not 3 hours. There is certainly some truth to the idea that people no longer seem to have the attention span to make time for historical epics, which is in part why the genre has largely become extinct, but “Havana” decidedly lacks the narrative momentum to justify a running time of anywhere close to 150 minutes. The whole point of the film during its first half is to show us a seemingly prosperous, vibrant city on the precipice of collapse. The fate of Cuba after the revolution and Castro took charge is well documented, but in the late 1950s it was…
Unperturbed by Richard Lester's 1979 film, Cuba, a box office flop that also attempted to recreate the fall of the Batista regime from an outsider's point of view, and unashamed in their remaking Casablanca in all but name, Sidney Pollack and Robert Redford bring us Havana; a romantic film that displays a love for the place rather than a love between its central characters.
I love the cast, I like the director but this is little more than a beautiful misfire. Pollack reunites with his Out of Africa, The Way We Were and Three Days Of The Condor leading man Redford, casting him as the apolitical jaded Jack Weil, a professional cardsharp who enters Cuba ready for the biggest poker…
Most of Sydney Pollack's best films were with Robert Redford: This Property is Condemned, Jeremiah Johnson, The Way We Were, Three Days of the Condor, The Electric Horseman, Out of Africa and Havana. It is a fairly formidable list of classy, if not classic, American dramas. Redford's easy-shown but hard-won idealism and Pollack's easy pacing co-exist in all their films, but perhaps no more so than in Havana.
Havana is a pleasure to watch, even if it isn't all that objectively brilliant. A quasi-Casablanca, set in revolutionary Cuba, where Redford is a poker playing American, and Lena Olin is marred to a Cuban revolutionary (played by the great Raúl Juliá), they fall in love, a revolution occurs.
Like Casablanca, Havana…
no disrespect to swedish homegirl but personally i think i could’ve convinced poker-player robert redford to support the cuban revolution using my immense powers of persuasion
Havana is one of the more grown up movies that I’ve watched in a while. It involves the revolution in Cuba, but is really a love story masquerading as a poker movie. I must surely have watched this as a kid, but this is not a movie made for kids and I am not talking about violence and sex, because there isn’t a lot of that in Havana.
But I enjoyed the movie this time around, which looks good, has solid performances and even Richard Farnsworth delivering the best and most memorable line in the entire movie. Robert Redford asks him if he wants to come to Las Vegas with him, to which Farnsworth (an old professor and poker player)…
Sydney Pollack's sultry semi-remake of Casablanca. This is a gorgeous film to watch. Great performances. Really won me over.
i was born to be robert redford's silly little housewife twirling my hair and giggling rn
