Luis ( Nestor Carbonell) embraces the revolutionary cause, and Ricardo ( Enrique Murciano) journeys into the mountains to fight with Castro. It is the kind of offer Fico can refuse, although that might not be prudent.įico's brothers have a different orientation in the dying days of the old regime. At a time when Batista's grip seems to be weakening, when reports from the mountains magnify Castro's popularity, he receives a visitor: The gangster Meyer Lansky ( Dustin Hoffman), who wants to become Fico's partner in turning El Tropico into a casino.
Fico wants this life to continue forever, and like Rick in " Casablanca" he is not particularly political. Showgirls perform a Vegas-style revue, the customers are elegant and intriguing, and at the door their big sleek American cars glisten in the neon lights. Garcia stars in the film as Fico Fellove, a suave operator who owns and runs a Havana nightclub named El Tropico. There is a moment in the film when a senator agrees that Batista must be overthrown, but argues wistfully that it must be done "constitutionally." Fat chance. Garcia and Infante are against the old and the new, against both the rotten Batista regime and the disappointment of Castro and Che Guevara. The problem is that Castro did not cure the ills so much as distribute them more evenly, so that more could be miserable. (The project, long discussed, was not easy for Garcia to finance Infante died in February 2005.) Infante and Garcia do not deceive themselves that the old Cuba was a paradise: It is seen as corrupt, controlled in key areas by the Mafia, and built on a class system in which many were poor so that a few could be rich. Garcia's family lived in that older Cuba, and so did Guillermo Cabrera Infante, the Cuban writer and film critic who wrote this screenplay.
0 kommentar(er)
