Violence in Cuba but not from Castro

'3 Days in Havana' Starring Gil Bellows and Greg Wise. Directed by Tony Pantages and  Gil Bellows.


 Be careful of Canadian tourists.
   That's the message Cubans and others may take away after seeing '3 Days in Havana'. Jack Petty (Gil Bellows) seems like a polite Vancouver-based insurance salesman  who comes off the tarmac in Havana looking like innocence itself.
     Bellows played in t.v.'s 'Ally McBeal'  for many years.
     Then he meets a Scotsman named Harry Smith. He's supposedly a travel journalist. Yet played by Greg Wise, a t.v. star from the U.K., Smith in fact is a cocaine-sniffing gangster.
     Co-directors Vancouver's Tony Pantages and Bellows  show us all the sights and sounds of touristy Havana. There's crumbling sidewalks, dance halls full of exotic-looking women, dozens of Cuban cigar smoking people, old model U.S. cars and even synchronized swimmers who do their stuff in near empty swimming pools.
    Cinematographer Peter Stathis has given a wide view of Havana which includes a visit to Ernest Hemingway's old drinking spot. Here, a bronze statue of Hemongway leans on the bar waiting to be served another whisky.
    "You've been playing both sides, haven't you?" one man who follows Petty around, tells him. Soon Petty ends up in the hands of gangsters who nearly beat him to death.
    "You're the unluckiest fuck in this planet," one of his torturers tells him.
     Yet the beginning and end of this film don't seem to fit the film. Some other scenes seem pasted on for effect. And Petty's sudden turning from a regular insurance salesman into a snarling man of action, strikes me as unreal.
     In any case, '3 Days in Havana' is full of fun, drinking, and alas, murder. So Cubans beware! Some Canadian tourists could be dangerous, even if they say, "I just sell insurance."