Havana (film) - Plot

Plot

The film is set on the eve of the Cuban Revolution's victory on January 1, 1959.

On Christmas Eve, 1958 aboard the boat from Miami to Havana, Roberta Duran enlists the aid of Jack Weil (Robert Redford) in smuggling in U.S. Army Signal Corps radios destined for Cuban Revolutionaries in the hills. Weil agrees only because he is romantically interested in Ms. Duran. When they rendezvous for the "payoff", Roberta reveals she is married, dashing Weil's hopes.

Weil meets up with a Cuban journalist acquaintance (Tony Plana) and during a night on the town they run into Roberta and her husband, Dr. Arturo Duran. Dr. Duran (Raúl Juliá) is a Revolutionary leader. When Roberta points Weil out to him, Dr. Duran invites Weil to join them for dinner, and asks Weil for further aid to the cause. Weil turns him down, even after Duran outlines the desperate situation confronting the Cuban majority.

The next morning, after a night of debauchery for Weil, but a night of arrests of Revolutionaries by the secret police, Weil reads a newspaper account of Dr. Duran's arrest and death. In shock, he continues with the planned poker game, at which he meets the head of the secret police. He learns that Roberta was also arrested and held; she was also tortured. Weil uses the debt one of the other players (a lieutenant) owes him to obtain Roberta's release. In shock from her husband's death and her own experience in jail, she agrees to let him shelter her in his apartment, but that afternoon she disappears.

Realizing that he is in love with Roberta, and encouraged by an old gambling friend, Weil drives into Cuba's interior to find her at Dr. Duran's old estate. He persuades her to return with him to Havana and to leave Cuba with him. When she asks, he explains that a lump on his arm contains a diamond he had sewn into his arm in his youth, as insurance that no matter what happens in life, one always has that diamond.

He makes arrangements for her to leave Cuba via boat, but on his return to the apartment, he is assaulted by two Cubans who inform him that Arturo demands that he get Roberta out of the country. In amazement that Dr. Duran is still alive, he wrestles with himself and pretends to Roberta that nothing is amiss. He uses the time thus bought to confirm the story with CIA agent Marion Chigwell (Daniel Davis) whose acquaintance he had made. He obtains the information by threatening to blow the agent's cover of gourmet magazine writer, then uses it also to make a deal with him regarding Dr. Duran. Pretending to work for the CIA, Weil goes to see Dr. Duran, who is held by the chief of the secret police (SIM). He tells the chief that Washington, D.C. has new plans for Duran and wants him released, with a payoff of $50,000. He "orders" the chief to have Duran cleaned up and dressed (Duran had been tortured and was in extremely bad shape) and taken to his house. Weil goes to a doctor, then a jeweler, to sell the diamond to raise the cash for Dr. Duran's release.

Back at his apartment, he informs Roberta, who had decided to make a life with him, that her husband is still alive. In shock, she leaves on her own to find her husband. Meanwhile, Weil had blown the big game with high rollers he had been angling for since the day he arrived in Havana. The casino manager Joe Volpi (Alan Arkin) forgives him, knowing he had made rescuing Roberta his priority.

That night, New Year's Eve, 1959, the insurrection is won by the Revolutionaries. The upperclass, the government and the secret police all leave their lavish New Year's Eve parties to make a mad dash to the ports and airport to leave the country. The people pour into the streets, celebrating the victory by trashing the casinos and dancing. Weil and Joe agree it is a new day and time for them to go.

The next morning, Weil is in a restaurant preparing to depart. He sees Marion who informs him that he is working on a new book now, "The Cuisine of Indochina." Not long after, Roberta shows up to wish him farewell. She discovers, by seeing the bandage on his arm, what it had cost him to save her husband for her. They hug goodbye. She remains with the Revolution, and he has been changed by it.

Four years later in 1963, Jack drives down to the Florida Keys and gazes across the sea toward Havana, hoping to see a boat that might bring Roberta on board. He knows the ferry is no longer running. However, he does this every year. He hopes to someday see Roberta again. He also realizes that the changes in Cuba were being echoed in the changes of the 1960s happening in America. It's a new decade.