Havana (film)
| Havana | |
|---|---|
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| Directed by | Sydney Pollack |
| Produced by | Sydney Pollack Richard Roth |
| Written by |
Judith Rascoe David Rayfiel |
| Starring | |
| Music by | Dave Grusin |
| Cinematography | Owen Roizman |
| Edited by |
Fredric Steinkamp William Steinkamp |
| Distributed by | Universal Pictures |
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Release date
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Running time
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140 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $40 million |
| Box office | $9,243,140 |
Havana is a 1990 American drama film starring Robert Redford, Lena Olin and Raúl Juliá, 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. En route to Havana, he meets Roberta Duran (Olin), the wife of a revolutionary, Arturo (Juliá). 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.
The film is set on the eve of the Cuban Revolution's victory, on January 1, 1959.
On Christmas Eve, 1958, aboard the boat from Miami to Havana, Roberta Duran (Lena Olin) enlists the aid of Jack Weil (Robert Redford) in smuggling in U.S. Army Signal Corps radios destined for the revolutionaries, in the hills. Weil agrees only because he is romantically interested in Roberta Duran. When they rendezvous for the "payoff," Roberta reveals tha she is married, dashing Weil's hopes.
Weil meets up with a Cuban journalist acquaintance (Tony Plana) and during a night on the town, they run into Roberta and her husband, Dr. Arturo Duran. Duran (Raúl Juliá) is a Revolutionary leader. When Roberta points Weil out to him, Duran invites Weil to join them for dinner and asks Weil for further aid to the cause. Weil turns him down, even after Duran outlines the desperate situation confronting the Cuban majority.
The next morning, after a night of debauchery for Weil but a night of arrests of Revolutionaries by the police, Weil reads a newspaper account of Duran's arrest and death. In shock, he continues with the planned poker game, and he meets the head of the secret police. He learns that Roberta was also arrested and held; she was also tortured. Weil uses the debt that one of the other players (a lieutenant) owes him to obtain Roberta's release. In shock from her husband's death and her own experience in jail, she agrees to let him shelter her in his apartment but disappears that afternoon.
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 Druran's old estate. He persuades her to return with him to Havana and to leave Cuba with him. When she asks, he explains that a lump on his arm contains a diamond that he had sewn into his arm in his youth, as insurance that no matter what happens in life, one always has that diamond.
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