The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976)

Simply Perfect

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Cosmo Vitelli (Ben Gazzara) owns the burlesque club Crazy Horse West in California. Business is a little slow. After paying off his gambling debt, he promptly loses $23k more at a private casino. The boss calls in the debt and forces him to kill a minor Chinese bookie to clean the slate. Only the minor figure turns out to be a major gang leader.There is something hypnotic about John Cassavetes' directing style. Ben Gazzara is charismatic. I watched the 135-minute version. Even the long rambling burlesque shows are fascinating. It's supported by a gangster story that provides the movie with its drive. I do wish that Cassavetes would film the action with more intensity. His style doesn't work as well with the action scenes. Also after the final shootout, I rather have the movie end quicker.

"The Killing is an innovative thriller trapped inside a bloated self-indulgent work of improvisational theater." I don't have much to add to this comment except to say that there is actually a pretty good story in here. It's well developed and escalates nicely. The protagonist, well played by Ben Gazarra, is truly an interesting (if not very likable) character.Unfortunately, the character and story are weighed down by interminable scenes from the tawdry shows-within-a-show that the main character produces in his strip club. These shows are just bizarre and amateurish. A few glimpses of them would have given us all we need to know about Cosmo Vitelli and his world, but instead we're subjected to these scenes over and over, in stultifying detail. It's just. . . boring.Another reviewer here has complained that Vitelli is wounded in a way that should be fatal, and yet he finishes out the movie as if he doesn't have a care in the world. That reviewer is right. It's just ridiculous and unbelievable.And then there's the complaint that killing the Chinese Bookie of the title--getting past the dogs and the guards--is way too easy for Vitelli. Also a legitimate knock against the movie.No one has mentioned that there's also some pretty bad cinematography on display here--scenes in which the camera follows so poorly during closeups that actors' eyes drift out of the frame.There's an interesting movie in here, but it's so amateurish and self-indulgent in places that that movie is suffocated.

"The Killing Of A Chinese Bookie" is not only a crime drama with a familiar type of plot but also a fascinating character study which explores the ways in which a flawed man's preoccupations and propensities could determine his fate. The main protagonist's vanity and high regard for the value of style provide the trigger for this story about a gambling debt, a murder and a double-cross and the circumstances in which his life is propelled into an uncontrollable downward spiral is portrayed as being both pathetic and inevitable.Cosma Vitelli (Ben Gazzara) is the owner of an L.A. strip joint who celebrates making the final payment on the purchase of his business by taking three of his strippers for a night out that ends at a gambling club where he runs up a debt of $23,000 which he's unable to pay. Club owner Mort Weil (Seymour Cassel) is a gangster and soon Vitelli is told forcibly that in order to pay off his debt, he must either produce the full amount immediately or if not, murder a Chinese bookie who has, for some reason, become troublesome to the mob.Vitelli decides to make the "hit" because he has no alternative and sets off to carry out his mission reassured, to some extent, by the advice he's been given that his target is a small time operator who has little or no personal security. To the astonishment of the mob, Vitelli carries out his task successfully and as a result, their plan to take over his business, following his death, fails.The Chinese bookie had, in reality, been a high-ranking gangster with a number of well armed personal bodyguards and Vitelli is shot and seriously wounded by one of them. Typically, for a man who's greatest love is his club, he returns there to carry on his work despite his injury and the fact that his actions have led to him being dumped by his girlfriend as well as being pursued by the mob and the Chinese gangsters.Cosmo Vitelli sees himself as a successful businessman with an artistic bent as he manages his own club and also has first hand involvement with choosing the musical numbers and choreographing the dance routines. He likes to impress others by travelling in a limo with his glamorous girls and also by gambling in a style that he can't really afford. He's also a passive man who, when things go wrong, simply seems to accept (in a fatalistic way) the inevitability of what's happening. Ben Gazzara, with his innate charisma, is perfectly cast as the likable Vitelli who's destined to never achieve the kind of respectability that he thinks he's already achieved.This movie was directed by John Cassavetes whose use of hand-held cameras, unusual editing techniques and improvisation creates an amazing naturalism and an atmosphere that's unsettling and sometimes tense. Cassavetes was an innovative filmmaker and it's disappointing that this movie never achieved the commercial success that it merited, either in its original 135 minute 1976 version or in the 108 minute re-edit which was released in 1978.

Artsy crap masquerading as a gangster film, is so annoying and boring, that it is a form of punishment to watch. Lines are mumbled and in many cases inaudible, not that anything interesting is being said anyway. Unbelievable chop shop editing, meaningless redundant scenes, such as the terribly boring strip club act are repeated over and over. No characters other than Ben Gazzara's are even remotely developed. The extreme closeups and hand held camera are headache inducing. Frequent light flares into the camera lens, and overly dark night scenes only add to the ineptness of this improvised mess. Avoid at all costs........ MERK