docm-32304 I was looking forward to this film as I was very interested to see if US propaganda against Cuba would overshadow the film or whether some historical accuracy would be portrayed. Unfortunately this film shows like a quickly thrown together filler that trades on Sean Connery's big name. There are plenty of good cast members like Martin Balsam, Jack Weston, Alejandro Rey, Hector Elizando and of course Connery, but none of them capture the essence of their roles. Connery in particular hardly seems like a military man let alone a top notch mercenary as he wander through the film as if he were waiting for the script.I was hoping for more, but it never delivered

jacegaffney Perhaps the reason I like this film so much is because I don't, normally, like the cinema of Richard Lester. I've always found it too frenetic to be funny and too fragmented to be involving on any human level. However, CUBA is, arguably, the most misunderstood picture to close out the decade of the 70s. It is a brilliant visual satire of a society in total materialistic collapse with every character in the picture (save the white knight James Bond figure played by Sean Connery who is rendered completely ineffectual by the chaos that is tumbling down upon him)is literally on the take. What is extraordinary here is that the mise-en-scene is as visually dazzling and stylistically coherent CAPTURING chaos as it is satirically barbed, subtle and consistently ingenious. You really have to WATCH this movie. There's always something inventive and extremely droll going on around the edges. The supporting cast of Jack Weston, Hector Elizondo, Walter Godell, Martin Balsam, Chris Sarandon, Denholm Elliott and Alexandro Rey (unrecognizable)was flawlessly assembled but because the film doesn't ANNOUNCE its satirical intentions and Lester refuses to telegraph his gags and put anything in the center of the frame, most people came away from the picture pooh-faced. Well, there is one other problem with CUBA and Lester has to take the brunt of the responsibility for it which is, in his corrosively ebullient fervor (and perhaps because, as a director he never responded to women very much), he left poor, ultra-lovely Brooke Adams out to dry as a character. It's clear that he has nothing but contempt for the "Casablanca" aspect of the story involving her and Connery but he should have done a better job disguising the fact. I think Connery is terrific in his role making the pathos of his Gable-like flawed hero comical and deeply affecting. Lester was even more successful in JUGGERNAUT satirizing a genre while squeezing the maximum thrills out of it at the same time. CUBA doesn't work successfully on both levels in the way that JUGGERNAUT does. But it is the most impressively detailed and dynamically precise cinematic rendering of what the last days of a politically corrupt regime looks like - as it goes into free-fall - that a mainstream commercial film maker has ever given us.

sol1218 (Some Spoilers) The days are not only numbered for the year 1958 but also for the Batista regime running Cuba as well. With the Cuban rebels lead by the "Bearded One", Fidel Castro, streaming out of the Mestra Serria Mountains and linking up with thousands of supporters in the big cities like Havana and Santiago. Batista and his gang are making every attempt to get out of the island with all the loot that can carry before the rebels take over the Havana airport, Batista & Co.only escape route, and put them in front of a firing squad. In the middle of all this chaos British mercenary Maj.Robert Dapes, Sean Connery, is hired by the Batista government to help steam the rebel tide. Arriving in Havana Robert finds that there's more then a revolution going on in Cuba. There's the stunning and beautiful Alexandra Lopez de Pulido, Brooks Adams,there for whom he's carried a torch for over fifteen years, since he was a British soldier in North Africa back in WWII.Robert realizes right away that the situation is hopeless for the government forces and plans to get out of the country as soon as he can. Yet he's torn with fleeing Cuba an at the same time leaving his former, and now rediscovered, lover Alexandra behind. Alexandra is married to wealthy and politically connected Cuban Juan Pulido, Chris Sarandon,who besides being a good for nothing spoiled rich boy is also cheating on her. Juan is having an affair with the sexy Therese Mederos, Lon Etta McKee, who works in his cigar factory as a tobacco roller. With everything falling apart in the confusion There's younger brother Julio, Danny De La Paz, who's a Castro supporter. Julio is out to kill Juan for his disrespecting his sister by having her treated like she's a hooker. Robert tries to get Alexandra to come with him out of the war-torn island nation but she decides to stay in her beloved Cuba and face whatever the coming Castro regime has to offer her. With Robert leaving on the last plane out of the now rebel-controlled Havana Airport we see Alexandra, on the ground, in tears watching him leave Cuba as well as her heart forever. As for Alexandra's cheating husband Juan he get's just what's coming to him at the conclusion of the movie. The film "Cuba" shows the audience just how things were on that island nation back in late 1958 and up to New Years Day 1959 when the Castro rebels took over the country. The last days of the Batista Regime were so weird and surrealistic that most of the people there couldn't fathom just what was happening and acted as if everything was just normal; as their world was slowly collapsing all around them.

steve-raybould An enjoyable thriller, which although filmed in Spain, manages to capture the atmosphere and lunacy of the last days of Batista's dictatorship perfectly. Probably a contractual purposes project on the behalf of director Lester, he manages to inject just enough of his own idiosyncratic style to lift this adventure flick out of the run of the mill. Connery is totally convincing in his role as Brit counter-insurgency advisor/mercenary. Brook Adams is stunning. Good anglo-american supporting cast. Plot begins to lose its impetus about a reel before the end, and at a running time of nearly two hours, is overlong. But well worth renting the video. Socialists will not find its political interpetation of events offensive, but may be puzzled or angered by the soundtrack over the final titles - as a victorious Fidel approaches the podium, chants of 'Fidel! Fidel!' are over dubbed with a Nuremberg chorus of 'Sieg Heil!'. Discuss.