The Mambo Kings (1992)

626 3-19-92
From its breathtaking opening shot in a Havana nightclub, where frenzied dancing muffles the backstage cries of a woman watching a man's throat cut, The Mambo Kings runs on pure emotion. First-time director Arne Glimcher surely does a service to Oscar Hijuelos's Pulitzer Prizewinning novel, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, by not trying to cram it all into a two-hour movie. The book spans three decades; the film zeroes in on the years from 1952 to 1955, when two…