There's something about Cuba, just ninety minutes south of Key West in Florida, and its revolution at the end of the 1950s that has fascinated filmmakers and artists. Perhaps because it marked the end of an era for American interests in the country or how it set the stage for some of the major Cold War confrontations of the decade that followed, including the failed invasion at the Bay of Pigs and the dramatic events of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Whatever the case, director Richard Lester would be one of those who brought their lens to bear exploring it with this 1979 film.
The film's focus, as much as it had one, would be on a former British army major turned mercenary, hired by the toppling Batista government to help deal with their guerilla insurgency. Who better to play Major Dapes than Sean Connery? Connery brings a sense of both presence and world-weariness to the part, a man who comes to do a job only to be surrounded by fools and a chance to rekindle an old flame. Wandering between exasperation, earnestness, and hope for love, it's arguably one of Connery's most underrated performances and one that deserves more attention.
Backing Connery was a large supporting cast, perhaps too large. Brooke Adams plays the old flame Alexandra that seemingly conflicted object of desire whose motives are as elusive to viewers as she is to Major Dapes. More understandable as a character, if far less sympathetic, is Chris Sarandon as her playboy and womanizing husband, blowing money and sleeping his way around. From there, the cast features character actors is ranging from Jack Weston's slimy American businessman to Martin Balsam as the corrupt blowhard of a Cuban general who hires Connery and Denholm Elliott as a fellow British ex-pat flying for anyone with money. There are some notable then up-and-comers in the cast from Hector Elizondo's as Connery's Cuban military escort to Roger Lloyd-Pack as a Cuban revolutionary. While the film is guilty of too much casting of white actors as Cubans, it's full of good actors in parts that too often aren't enough for them to use to the utmost of their talents and seem to wander in and out of the plot without reason.
Mentioning the way characters wander in and out of the film brings us to something that is both a strength and weakness of it. Under both Lester's direction and at the pen of screenwriter Charles Wood, this is a kaleidoscope of a film. One that takes us from the streets, hotels, and clubs of Havanna into the factories and plantations of the countryside. From the strip shows of Louisa Moritz's Miss Wonderly to a group of guerillas and the ex-pats taking advantage of it all, the various strata of Cuban society teetering on edge ready to fall are on display. Thanks to a mix of location filming in Spain, sets, and costumes, it's also vividly presented. Full of both borderline poverty and decay mixed with decadent excess and splendor, and ripe for a change that was perhaps inevitable.
The problem is that it also means the film never comes together. In an ideal world, or maybe with some slight editing, Cuba would flow together as a series of interconnected events, the tale of disparate people who wander in and out of each other's lives. Instead, and where the blame lies isn't clear, the film feels like the scripts for several different ones tossed together. Or like an anthology of short stories linked together without enough connective tissue. Combined with dialogue that can border the cliche at times and downright wooden in others, it knocks the whole work down a few rungs.
Cuba then remains an intriguing but flawed piece of work. So many of its elements, from Connery's performance to its location and kaleidoscope view, work so well. Yet it's scope is in some ways too wide, with no one and nothing well-defined enough to come entirely into focus. Nevertheless, as a portrait of a time and place, Lester's Cuba works far better than it does as a drama and remains watchable even with its flaws.
