This is to everyone who gave this film a poor review, saying that it is masquerading as a gangster picture or that the dialogue was improvised. If Cassavetes heard you saying the film belonged in the gangster genre he would have cried. And he said that himself. He admitted that the plot was that of a crime film, but as a whole the film is not about the crime. It is about the people surrounding Cosmo and the way they interact. It is about love and the lack of love as that was all Cassavetes was interested in. When he is going out to the bookie's house we do not focus on why he is going there, we focus on the people that are around him or that he talks to on the phone. The crime theme is only to set up the downfall of Cosmo's character, which is how he ultimately loses some of the love he had in his life. As for the dialogue being improvised, there was only one scene in which the dialogue was improvised (when Cosmo goes to his girlfriend's house after being shot and talks to her mother). There was only one film that Cassavetes made that was almost completely improvised which was Shadows (another great film). And anyone who calls Cassavets an amateur or says his visual style is amateur is completely false. The scenes I'm guessing you are referring to are the ones filmed on the hand-held camera (by Cassavetes himself). Here he is going for the raw style and loves to get as close in to his actors as possible so we can see their expressions clearly and become uncomfortable and more involved in their emotions. That is probably my favorite thing about Cassavetes filmmaking, especially here, is that he does not move the camera if someone steps in front of it, and he allows his actors and camera to move freely with one another. "Chinese Bookie" is his best.
Review of The Killing of a Chinese Bookie
