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Lost City, The
Mixed or average reviews
Based on 23 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 43 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Drama
Written by: G. Cabrera Infante
Directed by: Andy Garcia
Release Date:
Theatrical: April 28, 2006
DVD: August 8, 2006
Running Time: 143 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: R for violence
Starring Andy Garcia, Dustin Hoffman, Tomas Milian, Bill Murray, Jsu Garcia, Inés Sastre, Enrique Murciano, Nestor Carbonell, Victor Rivers, Steven Bauer, Dominik García-Lorido, and Juan Fernández
Andy Garcia stars and makes his directorial debut in a passionate and historical tribute to his native Cuba. (Magnolia Pictures)
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site Official Distributor Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington
Throbbing with music, seething with anger and romance, The Lost City is a film that breaks your heart, bewilders, alienates and ravishes you by turns.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
The movie evokes that long-ago world carefully and with a certain poetry; it was shot in the Dominican Republic. There is a lot of music, much of it from the period and performed by the same musicians or their successors.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Stephen Hunter
Some of the tropes of The Lost City are ineffective. What does work is the sense of loss. The late Cuban novelist and screenwriter G. Cabrera Infante finds a brilliant device in the love affair between Fico and Aurora (Ines Sastre), his sister-in-law, in that Aurora in some way becomes Cuba.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer
What keeps the film watchable, aside from the vibrant musical numbers in the nightclub, is Garcia's obvious love for the Cuba of his ancestors, of his dreams. A lot goes wrong in this overlong movie, but it has a human touch.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
Watching The Lost City is like falling into a delirious dream on a marathon train ride only to be roused every 15 minutes by a conductor punching your ticket or barking out the next stop.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Sheri Linden
A handsome production but one that struggles to integrate its various elements -- cabaret-society glamour, intellectual fervor, family drama, impossible romance and droll humor.
Read Full Review >Variety Scott Foundas
A handsomely produced, deeply passionate, but seriously flawed historical epic whose reach far exceeds its grasp. Somewhere inside this overlong, sometimes engaging, often tedious affair, there may be a solid, 100-minute movie.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jami Bernard
When an intensely emotional scene calls for the voice to break, call in Andy Garcia. He does the best voice-breaking, half-choked sob of anguish in the business, and he does it a lot in Lost City, his well-meaning directorial debut.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
Falls far short of the sweep, complexity and passion it seeks.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Stephen Holden
In its groggy way The Lost City holds your attention. Incoherent, but splendidly panoramic and drenched in wonderful Cuban music, it has the texture of a vivid, intoxicating dream that seems to mean something until you wake up and feel it slipping away. All that remains are feelings and impressions connected by a mood.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Mark Olsen
In an era when so many films are cynical, cash-grabbing mechanisms of global corporate culture, no more and no less, it is frustrating to come across a work such as this, in which the grasp-exceeding reach and reckless vision of its creators become the biggest drawbacks rather than the film's greatest assets.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
Bill Murray plays the secondary role of a nameless American gag writer brimming with one-liners about the absurdity of Cuban life, Dustin Hoffman has a cameo as kvetching gangster Meyer Lansky.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker
For all the color and lively music, it's an overlong, messy labor of love built on a sense of personal betrayal that rings hollow.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten
Even though the movie is made with an abundance of heart, it's sad to report that the final result has only a weak pulse.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
The story may be scattered and sagging and the picture may have little emotional impact -- certainly nothing to justify the epic running time -- but Garcia at least succeeds in making Havana in the 1950s seem like a vibrant, special place. He doesn't exactly make the audience care, but he does make the audience understand why he cares, and that's something.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum
Garcia seems to be aping the "Godfather" movies and Warren Beatty's "Reds," but the movie's gracefulness is limited to its handling of the music (some of which Garcia wrote).
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Tim Grierson
Compelling in fits and starts, actor-director Andy Garcia's The Lost City possesses grand aspirations but troublesome execution.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
Though the filmmaker's feel for his Cuban heritage is bone-deep, it's a glazed and dolorous movie - a depressed epic.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin
Garcia might have thought he was making a Cuban "Casablanca," but his big, empty spectacle amounts to less than a hill of beans.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey
The lower orders seem to have been left out of The Lost City -- there just aren't any poor characters -- which for a movie about a workers' revolution seems downright slipshod.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Michael Atkinson
Garcia's tale bemoans the loss of easy wealth for a precious few. Poor people are absolutely absent; Garcia and Infante seem to have thought that peasant revolutions happen for no particular reason--or at least no reason the moneyed 1 percent should have to worry about.
Read Full Review >New York Post Lou Lumenick
Sometimes there's a fine line between a labor of love and a vanity project, and The Lost City, Andy Garcia's heartfelt - but hackneyed and interminable - love letter to his native Cuba, repeatedly crosses it.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Wesley Morris
The Lost City is Andy Garcia's ballad to Havana during the Cuban revolution. You'll have to forgive the penthouse view, though -- it's the only one Garcia can seem to find.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 8.5 (out of 10) based on 43 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Manolo E. gave it an8:
I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, with two exceptons that I will elaborate on later. The music and cinematography in the movie was extraordinary, as well as the sets used in the making of the movie. The sets and costumes lend to the feel of the movie, just as the Casablanca set and costumes did for that movie; it transports you to that place and time. Now to the two exceptions that keep me from giving the movie a higher score: I understand that the writer included Bill Murray's character as a sort of subconscious of the writer and as a way to keep those not interested in the storyline from walking out of the theatres. Truth be told, the Murray character actually detracts from the real story and the seriousness of the same. The second issue deals with the portrayal of President Batista as a sort of comical figure (combing his eyebrows with a comb and spit, making comical remarks to his butler, etc.). Anyone who has read about Fulgencio Batista will tell you that he was far from being that way; if anything, he was at the other end of the spectrum; he was a former military leader who really had little time for distractions or joking around. My take on this portrayal of Batista, is that this was Andy Garcia's way of trying to convince the audience that he is not an opologist for Batista or what he represents. Whatever the reason, this detracts from the movie. At some point, Garcia needed to decide if he wanted to make a serious social movie with a historical background, a comedy or a love story. At times you can combine two of those categories, not all three. My mother's family in pre-Castro Cuba were basically rural farmers whom made a humble living from the crops they harvested, and they were happy living that way. My father 's family were middle class, and they lived a good tranquil life, just like Americans did in 1959 (except for the occasional bomb being set on busses, theatres and other p[laces by Fidel's militia). Having said that, I can tell you without hesitation, that the Cuban revolution had very little to do with the poor and any struggles they might have had, and unlike the newspaper accounts of the ultraliberal New York Times of that era, Fidel and his henchman were far from being "Robin Hoods" ("Robbing Hoods" is more like it). The Cuban revolution was financed by the rich and upper-middle class, whom felt that the U.S. had too many interests in Cuba at the time, and they felt they were being left behind. As was pointed out in a previous post, if you analyze who made up Fidel's cabinet after the revolution, they were members of the upper and upper-middle class (Doctors, accountants, politicians, etc.). What the revolution ultimately accomplished was to push the U.S. out of Cuba, in favor of the Soviet Union. The protagonists of the revolution (Fidel & company) did nothing else but turn Cuba into a socialist nation in which there would only be one class of people, wherein no one had anything (the exception were a privileged few, made up of Fidel's immediate group). Land, businesses and properties were taken from their rightful owners and given to those who were responsible for the overthrow of the government, every block had a "snitch" to report any type of activity that might go against the revolutionary government and family members turned on each other as portrayed in the movie. What I liked the most about the movie is that it portrays people as they were, "Che" Guevara as a ruthless assassin, not the romanticized freedom fighter he has been erroneously portrayed as in other movies , such as the Motorcycle Diaries. Andy Garcia balances things out and remains factual with history, as evidenced by his portrayal of two members of Batista's secret police who were ruthless in their own right. This is a balanced account of reality as it was during and after the revolution! It's a shame that the movie critics did not study the history of the Cuban revolution prior to writing their reviews of the film; had they done so, they may have rated the movie differently. I highly recommend you see this movie!
Amy B. gave it a10:
Mr Garcia i loved this movie, What a moving love story. I love Cuban food, music,culture and you really captured it all . I have been to Cuba, its sad what happened their.
jr m gave it a10:
Generally not a fan of Garcia but this film is absolutely fantastic. Plot, history and especially characters are unforgettable.
Robert I. gave it a5:
Beautiful, elegiac, too long, sometimes too sentimental, but evocative of a place now lost.
Hecma A. gave it a10:
I was telling my mother tonight that it seemed that Andy García made this movie for Cubans and Venezuelans as well. I watched the movie with my mother and boyfriend as we cried seeing exactly what is going on in my country at the moment. I congratulate Andy García for his courage and hope Cuba will finally be free. We all hope that in Venezuela this will not happen but we are seeing it all.
A. M. gave it a6:
I liked the story and the cinematography. The acting? Overall pretty good, although Bill Murray's character should have been axed, inappropiate and not funny. Dustin Hoffman's was too short and didn't add too much to the story. It was a little slow at times and could have been shortened. Ines Sastre was surprisingly good for a model... It just lacked something, can't put my finger on it. Directing maybe? It just didn't flow.
Chris W. gave it a2:
Snoozefeast-a-palooza! There's so much talent on the screen and none of it comes through. A boring story that has way too many distractions. I never thought that I would be disapointed seeing Andy Garcia, Bill Murray, and Dustin Hoffman in the same movie and in the same scene! I guess there's a lesson to be learned from this movie... what it is... I have no idea.
