Havana (1990) on Netflix
In December 1958, the gambler Jack Weil reaches Cuba to arrange a poker game. On the crossing from Miami, Roberta Duran asks him to carry radios to the revolutionaries in the hills.
- Netflix3.1/5
- IMDb6.1/109,271 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes28%
Trailer
Plot summary
Jack Weil, a professional gambler from the States, comes to Havana in December 1958, on the eve of the revolution, to set up a high-stakes poker game in the casinos that Joe Volpi manages for the mobster Meyer Lansky. On the crossing from Miami, Roberta Duran asks him to carry radios to the rebels in the hills, and he agrees because he is drawn to her. At the payoff she tells him she has a husband. In Havana his friend the reporter Julio Ramos shows him the town, and they run into Roberta with Arturo Duran, the revolutionary leader she married, who asks Jack to help the cause. Jack turns him down.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Havana (1990)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- For the quarter-mile-long street set informally called "The Big Set", the Prado was reconstructed at a former airbase in the Dominican Republic: a team of about 300 tradesmen was assembled, over 80 neon signs were made in the U.S. and shipped over, and the set took 20 weeks to construct.
- Sydney Pollack hoped to film in Havana, but U.S. law would not allow producers to spend U.S. dollars in Cuba, U.S. citizens could not legally enter Cuba and relations in 1989 were not conducive to filming there, so the entire film was made in the Dominican Republic.
- Costume designer Bernie Pollock had to outfit 2,000 extras and needed 8,000 to 10,000 costumes for the frequent changes across the film's scenes.
- Tomás Milián, who played Batista's head of secret police and had lived in Cuba during the 1950s, said the film recreated Havana in great detail; many of the extras were exiled Cubans, and Sydney Pollack said "our set took them back 30 years".
- Raul Julia chose to remain uncredited on Havana because the film's producers would not give him above-the-title credit alongside Robert Redford and Lena Olin.
