The Lost City (2005)

Havana In Turmoil

This is a story of turbulent Havana in the late 1950 -- a story Andy Garcia worked 16 years to bring to fruition to honor what his native home was and the people who lived there.

El Tropico is a successfully swank nightclub owned by Fico Fellove (Andy Garcia, who also directed). Fico is devoted to his family and to the amazing music and dance he presents at the club, but Batista threatens to destroy so much of what Fico loved.

Fico's father, the distinguished Federico (Tomas Milian), feels a constitutional government should replace Batista while his son Ricardo (Enrique Murciano) becomes a communist and his other son Luis (Nestor Carbonell) joins the democratic opposition.

Fico saves Ricardo from execution for anti-regime activities by calling in a favor and urges Ricardo to escape to New York, but instead Ricardo joins Che Guevara's rebel band. Luis becomes involved in a plot to kill Batista and restore democracy but the plot fails and Luis is eventually killed by Batista's police.

Meanwhile, Fico fights off advances by American mobster Meyer Lansky (Dustin Hoffman) who wants to bring gambling to El Tropico. When a bomb explodes at the club claiming the live of the star performer, who was also Fico's love, Fico suspects the mob but is never certain.

Fico's mother encourages him get involved with Luis' widow Aurora (Ines Sastre), and he does, eventually evolving into true love.

In many ways, this long film (2.5+ hours) is epic with further family deaths, suicide, disaster at the club, departure and beginning again.

Weaving throughout the tale is the wry writer (Bill Murray) who seems to have no other purpose than serving as the Greek chorus for this story.

The length and sometimes slow pace of the film made it, at times, tedious for me but overall, seeing Havana and the people of Havana trying to survive in that devasting time was interesting.

Rated R for violence.