Cuba, Cuba

I watched this filmd because of my interest in the Communist Revolution in Cuba in 1959. Robert Reford was also interested in this time period and put up his own money to make the film. Sadly for mister Redford it was a flop at the box office.

I will admit that I was intrigued by the film until the scene about 2/3 into the movie when Redford goes after his Cuban love interest who plays a leading role in the revolution. It was at this stage in filming that Redford began to run out of funds and a lot of his original plans for the end had to be scraped.

In essence Robert Redford is a card shark who travels to various casinos in the hopes of starting a pocker game with large enough stakes to set him up for life. Redford's character is good at what he does and convinces a Havana casino manager to let him set up high stakes poker games.

While working towards that one major score, Redford meets a beautiful Cuban woman who is married to a Communist leader from a prominent family in Cuba. Redford falls in love with her and risks his life to free her from prison when he finds out that her husband is dead.

Redford ends up blowing all sorts of money on the girl and still not ending up with her because he finds out her husband is in fact alive.

Honestly, unless you have some great interest in this time period this movie is not for most viewers. And even for those interested in the timer period the movie is not actually filmed in Cuba. Redford had to take his crews to the Dominican Republic to shoot the film and edited in some film taken from U.S. Coast Gaurd ships at the begining.