Our Man in Havana

A vacuum cleaner salesman living in Cuba gets recruited as an agent for the British secret service.  The DVD case bills this as a film noir, which isn’t ridiculously off the mark, but it’s really a spy movie with a comedic twist, similar in tone to Hopscotch or Charade.  The third collaboration between Carol Reed and Graham Greene, it certainly doesn’t reach the heights of The Third Man but is far more satisfying than The Fallen Idol.  While not laugh-out-loud hilarious, it is amusing, and is very well constructed (though perhaps slightly overlong).  Alec Guinness is magnificent as always, and has a lot of great supporting talent behind him, especially Burl Ives.  Rating: 8

IMDb