To be shot in the legendary architecture of the era, the project is a portrait of the last days of the U.S. mob in Batista’s Cuba, as seen by a young croupier who was the personal driver of Meyer Lansky, the architect of the mafia’s overseas empire.
The movie starts with some background on the internal tensions within the mafia due to the forced exile of leader Charlie Luciano and the push of rivals like Vito Genovese, with Bugsy Siegel, the man who made Las Vegas and Lansy’s childhood friend, becoming the first casualty.
By 1957, when a young Cuban dealer named Jaime Casielles is hired by Lansky, the ‘financier of the mob’ already controls a gambling paradise that the world has never seen before.
Lansky is ready to expand on his illicit ’empire,’ under the complicit and greedy eye of President Batista, when New York mob, itself hounded by the law back home, threatens to interfere.
The ominous visits of people like Albert Anastasia, the ‘lord executioner of the mob,’ obviously aim to wrestle Lansky’s hold on Havana, and defy Luciano’s exclusionary rules on cocaine imports to the U.S.
Beset by intrigue, while Lansky, with the assistant of Jaime, outmaneuvers his enemies, the movie also depicts the many sides of this thrilling era, not only its spectacular casinos and sumptuous entertainment, but its illicit pleasures, the electrifying mix of lavish lifestyle and a seedy, brutal society underneath that makes Lansky’s Havana an intoxicating and dangerous place.
With a more plausible reinterpretation of the known highlights in the struggle within the mafia at that time, Jaime’s view puts it all in context of a greater revolutionary taking place, and how it affects or shows us the gaping holes between characters, as Lansky’s delicate, cynical balance of power fails to notice the new developments that may ultimately bring down his long-cherished EMPIRE OF HAVANA.
