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'The Lost City' is hardly revolutionary

Havana-born actor Andy Garcia has chosen the Cuban revolution as the subject for his first feature as director, "The Lost City."

Lionsgate Films 'The Lost City' 2 out of 5 stars Director: Andy Garcia Starring: Steven Bauer, Andy Garcia, Richard Bradford, Nestor Carbonell, Lorena Feijoo, Dustin Hoffman, Bill Murray, Enrique Murciano, Inés Sastre, Tomas Milian Run time: 138 minutes Release date: April 28, 2006 Rating: R for violence. See showtimes On the web Official movie site View the trailer    Trailers require Quicktime Rate 'Lost City'   Go see it   Make it a matinee   Wait to rent   Don't bother Voter Limit: Once per Hour View Poll Results

Following an upper-crust family through the end of the '50s, "The Lost City" views the uprising strictly through their eyes: three sons (one, played by Garcia, owns a glitzy nightclub) disagree about what, if anything, needs to happen to repressive President Batista, while their father insists on maintaining family rituals as if nothing is happening.

Garcia effectively captures the glamour and music of a vanished way of life, but the film fails on a number of other fronts. Taking cues from his old director Francis Ford Coppola, he borrows heavily from the "Godfather" films (intercutting violence and public ceremony, for instance).

But where Coppola's saga was rich, "The Lost City" is blinkered, ignoring Cuba's poor and focusing only on an elite whose wealth is being confiscated by wrongheaded revolutionaries — a tough thing to face, surely, but not a tale with a "Godfather"-like universality or one that justifies its epic running time.

At almost two and a half hours, Garcia might have saved some money on length and spent it on more effective staging for his low-rent action scenes.