Richard Lester's riff on Casablanca is great fun, for the most part, because he's got a basic solid situation and can flesh it out with observations and colour.
Sean Connery is a British mercenary who rocks into Havana around 1958 to help take out Castro and runs into old flame Brooke Adams (back in the day he was 30 she was 15... jeez) who is married not to a nice dude but to a dodgy factory owner (Chris Sarandon). There's a strand of jailbait attraction in some Lester films -in Robin and Marian Ian Holm's king had a 12 year old bride.
Hector Elizondo with hair is a local officer assigned to Connery by General Martin Balsam. Brooke Adams is gorgeous - she had a moment in the sun, Adams, this came out around the time of Days of Heaven and Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Apparenty Ann Margret wanted to play the female lead but they went with Adams who was more believably Cuban - not a bad idea.
At heart this is a ensemble movie where the pleasure is in the subplots: Jack Weston as a salesman, Denholm Elliot as a shifty British ops, the two CIA men trying to balance budgets, the young revolutionary, his sister who works in a factory, the dancer at a club, Walter Gotell's factory owner, Hector Elizondo's young officer, Martin Balsam's corrupt detective, the sports games, the TV blaring.
The star driven center sometimes sits uneasily, in part because Sean Connery really is just another character - he's drifted along by events (he arrives to take out Castro, gets ambushed, but doesn't do much heroic; he roots Adams but she's not that into him). When the film focuses more on them it goes out of whack and the action stuff at the end (with Connery and Weston driving a tank) doesn't quite work.
But it's a film full of rich atmosphere and is stimulating to watch. All the actors are fabulous.
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