Set in Havana, Cuba in the late 1950s, a wealthy family, one of whose sons is a prominent night-club owner, is caught in the violent transition from the oppressive regime of Batista to the government of Fidel Castro.
By the half way point I was beginning to take back everything I said re Steven Soderbergh's dull-as-ditchwater Che: Part II - even he manages to drum up more tension than this.
Eleanor Ringel Gillespie
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
June 22, 2006
Somehow simultaneously too much and not enough. At 143 minutes, it well overstays its welcome as a movie, but with a little more fleshing out it might have worked as a miniseries.
Stella Papamichael
Film4
December 05, 2008
There may be a good film here, but it struggles to break free of the cumbersome framework.
Great music and costumes, but with a woeful plot and jaw-droppingly stilted dialogue. Cuban-born Garcia's main complaint against Fidel seems to be that rich, corrupt Cubans could no longer dance the night away.
'The Lost City' is intriguing as a historical document and adequate as cinema, but it has a blandness at its core that no amount of spicy mambo and booty-quaking dance routines can disguise.
