7.3 | / 10 |
Users | 4.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
Jim Wormold is an expatriate Englishman living in pre-revolutionary Havana with his teenage daughter Milly. He owns a vacuum cleaner shop but isn't very successful so he accepts an offer from Hawthorne of the British Secret Service to recruit a network of agents in Cuba.
Starring: Alec Guinness, Burl Ives, Maureen O'Hara, Ernie Kovacs, Noël CowardThriller | Insignificant |
Drama | Insignificant |
Comedy | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.35:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono (48kHz, 24-bit)
Music: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English SDH
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region free
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 5.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 1.0 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
If Graham Greene’s proffering of a vacuum salesman masquerading as a secret agent in Our Man in Havana strikes some as patently ridiculous, keep in mind that anyone you might meet could potentially have a little espionage in their past. At a recent gathering I attended, I got to talking to a gentleman who had already mentioned a career in both solar panel installation and plumbing work. However, he then went a bit further back into his history and mentioned (to my evident shock) how he had been recruited into the Central Intelligence Agency during the Reagan administration, serving for several years, continuing into the George H.W. Bush administration, an admission I believed without question due to the gentleman's matter of fact way of talking about it. When I asked him what his assignment was, he rather cheekily answered, “Unauthorized breaking and entering.” I picked up the distinct vibe that I probably shouldn’t delve any further into this line of inquiry. The upshot to all of this is that “secret agents” often are secret, crafting alter egos that allow them to spy surreptitiously while they supposedly go about whatever their pretend career is. Greene takes this inherent subterfuge and twists it comedically, presenting a mild mannered salesman named James Wormold (Alec Guinness) who is plying his trade in a pre-revolutionary Cuba (although the film was evidently shot at least partially during the Castro uprising and bears a quick text card alerting viewers to its timeframe which can be seen in screenshot 19), and who is rather unexpectedly recruited to be an MI6 agent by a mysterious guy named Hawthorne (a decidedly arch Noël Coward) for reasons which are never made overly clear. Wormold of course has absolutely no experience in anything of this kind, but he’s struggling to make ends meet and to provide supposedly “necessary” luxuries for his spoiled daughter Milly (Jo Morrow), and so reluctantly agrees to the scheme. Unfortunately for Wormold, there’s a monolithic bureaucracy back in London expecting fruits of Wormold’s spying labors, and that’s when the trouble really starts, with Wormold inventing an intricate web of lies that becomes increasingly hard for him to maintain.
Our Man in Havana is presented on Blu-ray with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.35:1. Culled from the Sony — Columbia library, this black and white CinemaScope production shows the kind of beautiful quality in a high definition presentation we've come to expect from this studio. Elements are in great condition and Oswald Morris' sumptuous cinematography is rendered with a gorgeously organic appearance. Contrast is consistent and the film segues surprisingly seamlessly between some of the location work and set bound pieces (there are very slight clarity variances in some cases). There's just the barest hint of image instability a couple of times—watch the horizontal pinstripes on the man's t-shirt in the film's opening scene (as well as the horizontal lines on a garage door in the background he passes in front of), and things tiptoe right up to the edge of aliasing without ever totally falling over. Aside from these very brief and transitory issues, this is another fantastic looking transfer from the typically reliable folks at Sony — Columbia.
Our Man in Havana features a workmanlike DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono track (the insert and menu incorrectly advertise a 1.0 mono track). Dialogue and effects are rendered well, if just a tad boxily at times, but the music, which features some nice source cues, sounds full bodied, albeit unavoidably narrow. There aren't any age related issues with regard to distortion or dropouts.
Greene's jaundiced take on his homeland hasn't always translated easily to the screen for some reason, and that may be the case here as well, though the film is undeniably smart and often at least somewhat slyly provocative. A cast of unparalleled charisma and talent helps to sell the material even when it's patently outlandish, and the Cuban locations give Our Man in Havana a nicely exotic ambience. Technical merits are first rate, but supplements are on the slim side. Recommended.
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