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A Successful Man (Un Hombre de éxito) is a captivating and well-paced late period masterwork from Cuban director Humberto Solás. It tracks the moral fall of an ambitious politician, Javier (César Évora), from the early thirties to the rise of Fidel Castro. Javier tries to play both sides of the constantly shifting Cuban power structures, often subservient to world superpowers, but ends up "burning his candle at both ends." His story is juxtaposed with his more upstanding brother Darío (Jorge Trinchet) setting off thematic plays on wealth and power that deepens and complicates as the story develops. Javier's story mirrors that of Michael Corleone's and the accomplished cinematography by Livio Delgado appropriates Gordon Willis' use of sulfuric darkness in The Godfather Part II and the sharp white, red, browns, and blacks employed by Vittorio Stororo for The Conformist to portray personal and societal corruption. Solás even hints that Fidel Castro is just one more interchangeable politician to whom Javier can pledge cynical allegiance. Headed by a large and uniformly solid cast, this is a great piece of epic filmmaking.