User Reviews

The real beauty of a Cassavetes film is that he is always driven to portray his stories in the most realistic manner possible, warts and all.

The majority of mainstream cinema is structured to deliver an escapist experience to the movie-going public because that is likely the primary reason why most people go to the movies; to see, hear and experience escapist fantasy. I do not malign such films, nor do I sneer at the people who enjoy them. Indeed, I enjoy an espionage, horror or sci-fi fantasy as much as the next guy. I even enjoy an occasional melodrama (The Seventh Veil, anybody?).

However, when I see a film that deals with the human condition... with everyday people, I much prefer a realistic perspective into their world. After all, mayn't people's lives and situations be compelling enough, if told properly, without escapist gloss and wooden, heavily scripted dialogue? I believe so. This is where Cassavetes shines, and where his influence upon current independent film can most powerfully be recognized.

Cassavetes pacing in this film is what probably drove many critics and viewers to criticize it so harshly. It can move at a snail's pace, especially during the painfully mediocre cabaret sequences (the cabaret owner Cosmo Vitelli is sublimely portrayed by long-time Cassavetes cohort Ben Gazzara). To watch the stumbling, off-key stage performances of the emcee and strippers is like torture, especially given the screen time Cassavetes devotes to their antics. The consequence is, however, that we are transported to a very REAL, very pathetic place in reality. Anything glossier or more skillfully choreographed would shatter the truth of what we see.

People talk over one another, they mumble, they cease to speak when you expect to hear them... But as mundane as these sequences seem, the fact remains that the story would be all the less compelling, were we to see our anti-hero in flashy sequences that synthetically push the story forward, beyond a natural pace that is apropos to the situation.

In the end, you realize that Cosmo (despite his impulsive behavior and seedy lifestyle) is a very real, very likable and very kind human being. He loves, and he is loved. His small entourage of powerless friends love him, and they feel loved. In the final sequence, our hero attains an almost Buddhist-like sense of the inevitability of his fate, the sweetness of the immediate moments of satisfaction that are his last few , his realization that there is, ultimately, nothing to regret except the finite.

Like many viewers, the first time I watched this, I thought nothing was happening. So I fell asleep midway through, only to awake for the film's uplifting ending in which Ben Gazzara gives the "girls" a pep talk -which is the greatest thing since the "win one for the gipper" speech in Knute Rockne. It made me want to see it again. Boy am I glad I did! This film is so much like real life that you not only watch it, you live it. Watching this movie is as intimate an experience as reading a novel. Thus, you are with the protagonist, Cosmo Vitelli, every step of the way. At first glance he appears to be doing nothing-but guess what folks, he's thinking. That what's missing in movies today: characters who take time to reflect before they act. People who accuse Gazzara of doing nothing here just don't get it. It's an amazing one of a kind performance in a movie that is character driven rather than plot driven. When this movie was first released, it was met with much criticism and public indifference. Audiences and critics expecting your typical mob picture were understandably disappointed. However, with Killing of a Chinese Bookie, John Cassavettes taught audiences and critics alike a valuable lesson: Rather than always criticizing films for not meeting our expectations, we need to reevaluate our expectations and expect a little bit more.

In many cases, the reality is enigmatic, and John Cassavetes is a genius to capture and exhibit that obscure sense of reality on celluloid. With deliberately rough camera work (containing lots of lens flares) and editing (not trimming out movements of the photographer's hands before and after actions), along with the crafted acting of Ben Gazzara, Cassavetes presents the obscure-hence-realistic underground gang world as no one else has. The camera movement and choreography of the murder scene is reminiscent of Godard--well calculated to appear to be not calculated. The scene is the only one accompanied by music; the entire film is inscrutably quiet.

The dragging story may be a part of his method, but it is a drawback to make the viewers lose their attentions. After Cosmo Vitelli (Gazzara) executes the killing, the plot focuses on the process he is going back to his ordinary life, but it is needlessly stretched out. Also, the scene of the confrontation against the gang members is a redundant second climax.

Cosmo Vittelli (Ben Gazarra) is a nighclub owner who just finished paying off a debt then promptly goes back into debt. The gangsters he owes money to make him sign some forms. He owes something like 23k but can get rid of it by killing a low level chinese guy who they can't kill but know pretty much everything about how to get to him. He doesn't take the offer, but then takes it because he has no choice, walks up the driveway in plain sight of bodyguards who do nothing, feeds burgers to dogs, walks up some stairs to an unlocked door, and kills the guy. He then leaves after killing a couple bodyguards.

But, twist, the low level chinese guy is actually a high level chinese guy with utterly horrible bodyguards, and he (Cosmo) wasn't meant to survive. But survive he does because he's a badass and the gang decides to just send a couple guys to kill him. They fail, he lives.

Oh yeah, the nightclub is a strip club where some guy sings and women show the occasional boob. The place is packed because, artsy strip club, duh.

Anyway, it ends with him giving an inspirational speech to the strippers, so go out there and get naked... for a couple seconds.

Look, I'm sure I missed some symbolism, or some connection, or some cinematography, or whatever. But the plot is just silly, the pacing is painfully slow, and the artsy strip club makes no sense. Everything I've heard and read from those who like it provide nebulous explanations -- the sort of hand wavy that works for some and not for others. I have hand wavy movies that I love and just really can't explain to others, or it just doesn't convey clearly why I like it. This feels like a movie that has that subset of people and I'm simply not part of the inside group.

3/10 with points for Ben Gazzara, who is great in an otherwise slow and dull movie.

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.

***SPOILER ALERT*** It's when nightclub owner Cosmo Vitelli, Ben Gazzara, finally paid off his debt to the local loan shark Marty, Al Ruban, is when his troubles really began.

Going out to celebrate his new found freedom with his top strippers including his girlfriend Rachel, Azizi Johari,at this mob run casino "Ship Ahoy" Cosmo lost $23,000.00 mostly in credit that the casino owner John, Moran Woodward, advanced to him. Now back behind the eight ball with his nightclub "The Crazy Horse West" in danger of being taken away from him Cosmao is forced to do a hit job for John & Co. What John wants Cosmao to do is knock off this obscure Chinese bookie, Soto Joe Hugh, or better known as the Chinaman in order to square things with him.

What Cosmo doesn't know is that he's being set up to be killed by the Chinaman who isn't a small time L.A hoodlum but the top crime boss on the West Coast! Without knowing all the facts Cosmo even if he succeeds in knocking off the Chinaman and living to tell about will then be targeted by the man, John, who contracted him to do it! A live Cosmo Vitelli is far more dangerous to John & Co. then a dead one! In that he knows, and can expose, who's behind the Chinaman's murder! Which will have the entire Chinaman mob breathing down on John & Co. necks!

****SPOILERS****Very off beat crime drama with Cosmo on the run for his life from both the John and Chinaman's, whom he knocked off with two of his bodyguards, mob.The movie ends on a down note in that Cosmo after getting away from both John and the Chinaman's mobsters is left, from what I can see, bleeding to death outside his nightclub that he took refuge in. This after his girlfriend Rachael left Cosmo knowing that she'll end up dead if she stays. As for Cosmo he at least had the last laugh in having those who were out to murder, as well as silence, him fail miserably. Even if he didn't live long enough to see it.

Director John Cassavettes most personal work that had his most deepest fears realized and put on the screen. Feeling that his dreams of making movies were being stolen from right under him, by the Moguls in Hollywood, Cassavettes used the metaphor of a nightclub owner, Cosmo Vitelli, to explain on film the demons that haunted him all his adult life. Actor and good friend Ben Gazzara at first turned down Cassavettes in taking the part of the doomed Cosmo Vitelli but when he was told by Cassavettes that it in fact was really about himself he did it as a favor to him. Cassavettes never was able to overcome the fears that the movie "The Killing of a Chinese Bookie" brought out about his personal life. Unable to control his destructive alcoholism Cassavettes' directing career continued to go downhill together with his health dying of a massive heart attack in 1989 at the age of 59.

I worship Cassavetes. While Coppola does mood and message, DePalma spectacle and effect, and Scorcese place and psychology, Cassavetes is all about the character, and nowhere do you see that more than in Killing. Cosmo Vitelli, strip club owner, is deep in debt and in danger of losing his beloved club. So to even things out with the Mob, he must bump off an important bookie, who happens to be Chinese. The plot isn't too intriguing, but Cosmo is. One of the most understated of Cassavetes' main characters (compared with the more involving Myrtle Gordon, Mabel Longhetti, and of course Gloria) Cosmo is a guy who's gone through life treating his emotions as secondary. They've rusted in the closet from being aired so little, and the Cosmo we meet at the beginning is selfish, sardonic, and closed off. When he kills the bookie (can you believe it!? the bookie dies!) he is horrified at what he's done and awkwardly handles being horrified in itself. By the very end he's still quiet, introspective and closed, but we get the feeling he's taken a look at his life and how he goes through it, and he's less than satisfied. It's some of the most subtle character development I've seen, and Ben Gazzara does a fantastic job as Cosmo. One of the signatures of Cassavetes' films is that they reach the climax, and then go on about another hour before ending. It's like life - things happen, but it doesn't stop there...life keeps trundling along, and we're expected to deal with what happens and keep up with the rest of the world. Some real-world surrealism qua 'artistic' strip club shows round everything off perfectly. Watching Cassavetes makes you a little nervous, because you know that if the lead actor is off, everything's going to be horrible. Thank God, the man really knows how to pick actors.

Directed by John Cassavetes, star of Rosemary's Baby, this was another film title I remembered spotting in the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die book, and naturally was very keen to give a go. Basically in California is Crazy Horse West strip club owner Cosmo Vitelli (Buffalo '66's Ben Gazzara), he does not talk much apart from during business deals, he is a war veteran, and he is an additive gambler. His gambling habit has got in a spot with the mob as he owes them a lot of their money, £23,000 to be precise, and in a poker game in an illegal casino he is distraught to lose the amount he needs to pay the debt. They pressure him to pay, but then they give him a proposition that if he kills a Chinese bookie they want out of the way they can forget the debt all together, he is apparently a smalltime businessman and his death will no consequence. Of course in reality he is actually a big hit as he is the mob rival and head of the Chinese mafia, but Vitelli does manage to sneak into his compound, kill the "bookie", plus two of his family members, and escape the gunfire of his bodyguards. He realises it was all a setup and they predicted he would not come out of the hit alive, and he does manage to get some kind of revenge against those who double-crossed him, but it is a question at the end what will happen to Vitelli and his empire next. Also starring Timothy Carey as Flo, Azizi Johari as Rachel, Meade Roberts as Mr. Sophistication, Seymour Cassel as Mort Weil, Alice Friedland as Sherry, Donna Gordon as Margo Donnar and Robert Phillips as Phil. Gazzara gives a good cool but dominating performance as the pressurised businessman who thinks he can get away from any trouble, but is actually having to face up to realities, the story may have confused me a little after the "killing" of the title, but overall I found it quite a gripping story, and certainly a most watchable crime thriller. Very good!