A cigar heist so ridiculous, even Castro's ghost would need a smoke break.
Sticks is an off-beat noir comedy about a smugglar of Cuban cigars who gets involved, and ultimately falls in love, with a Cuban revolutionary who's in the U.S. trading cigars for guns. The two join forces to sell a large (stolen) shipment of Castro's private label cigar, the famed "El Mariposa", and suddenly they find themselves enmeshed in the seedy underbelly of a mob-run cigar smuggling ring that's being monitored by the feds.
Acting
Lillo Brancato's committed chaos energy before the Sopranos fame.
Production
Genuine cigar knowledge that borders on obsessive.
Writing
Dialogue that thinks it's Chinatown but knows it's Clerks.
Director
Brett Mayer
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Director Brett Mayer allegedly financed this through actual cigar industry connections, blurring fiction and his day job.
Released during the 1998 cigar boom when Clinton's Lewinsky testimony made stogies suddenly mainstream again — this film rode that wave hard.
US
