Havana (film)

Havana is a 1990 American drama film starring Robert Redford, Lena Olin, Alan Arkin and Raul Julia, directed by Sydney Pollack with music by Dave Grusin.

The film's plot concerns Jack Weil (Redford), an American professional gambler who decides to visit Havana, Cuba to gamble in 1958 on the eve of the Cuban Revolution.

On Christmas Eve, 1958, aboard the boat from Miami to Havana, Roberta Duran enlists the aid of Jack Weil in smuggling radios for the revolutionaries in the hills.

In Havana, Weil meets a Cuban journalist acquaintance and during a night on the town, they run into Roberta and her husband, Dr. Arturo Duran, a revolutionary leader.

In shock, he continues with the planned poker game, coincidentally meeting the head of the secret police.

Realizing that he is in love with Roberta and encouraged by an old gambling friend, Weil drives into Cuba's interior to find her at Duran's old estate.

He makes arrangements for her to leave Cuba via boat, but on his return to the apartment, he is assaulted by two Cubans, who inform him that Duran demands he get Roberta out of the country.

The upper class, government officials, and the secret police all make a mad dash to leave the country.

Four years later in 1963, Jack drives down to the Florida Keys and gazes across the sea toward Havana, hoping to see a boat bringing Roberta.

The vegetation was the same, and Santo Domingo offered certain architectural similarities, though not a wide boulevard like Havana's famous El Prado (Paseo de Marti).

Besides 1950s period clothing, there were large numbers of hats, accessories, jewelry, and gloves, along with 1950s Cuban military uniforms.

Raul Julia chose to remain uncredited because the film's producers would not give him above-the-title credit alongside Robert Redford and Lena Olin.

The film has a 27% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 26 reviews with the consensus: "Handsomely produced and dramatically inert, Havana squanders its convincing recreation of pre-revolution Cuba by using it as a disconnected backdrop to a turgid romance.

Re-created El Prado as seen in the film
The film's Havana street under construction before production