Some things I liked some I did not.

The film was still a fun one that will make you laugh and have you leaving the theater feeling like you just stole something valuable and got away with it.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

Damn, what a masterpiece we have here!Probably my favorite Cassavetes movie.It's a combo of feelings. We have a deep loneliness here. Gazzara's character (Cosmo Vitelli) is the classic anti-hero, you can't hate him even if he kills a dog. The loneliness around him the whole movie is impressive, he is a true men, ready to do what is necessary for his life. The whole ambient are really dark too, with a lot heavy talk and killer scenes. The scene where Cosmo kills the Chinese bookie, for example, damn, it's a true classic. There's a lot of that kind of fear and loneliness that you can find just under the big city lights. And the way the movie captives you is impressive. You can see here a lot of things that influenced guys like Scorsese. Cassavetes is definitely unique and this movie is all you need to know about him. It's a masterpiece.

I saw the 1976 edit. The movie stars Ben Gazzara as the lead character, Cosmo Vitelli. The movie also features the underrated Seymour Cassel and Timothy Carey, one of the most bizarre, original actors to appear on the big screen.Cosmo is shown in the opening paying off a debt to a loan shark, swearing he'll never be in that position again. He goes back to his strip joint for the night's performance where we meet his performers and where he meets the owner of another joint who's out for the night to see Cosmo's club. Mort, played by Cassel, invites Cosmo over for some gambling. Cosmo promptly looses $23,000, which he can't pay. (In the mid-seventies, that was a couple years' worth of salary for most Americans.) When asked if he can write a check for it, Cosmo says he doesn't keep that much money in the bank; he puts most of his profits back into the strip joint, which he says does very well for him. We've seen his joint and the lack of a crowd, so we know the strip club is not doing well. This is a point that needs some off-screen elaboration. According to IMDb, Gazzara was having trouble figuring out Cosmo's character and motivation. In a discussion with Cassavetes, the director (who wrote the screenplay) started to cry as he described to Gazzara the film as a metaphor for big studios: the gangsters Cosmo was involved in represented the people trying to steal Cassavetes's dream of producing movies. Cosmo is Cassavetes, and the mobsters are the heads of big studios; the strip joint represents, in my opinion, Cassavetes's independent productions of his films. So in the scene where Cosmo explains he keeps his money in his joint, I'm hearing Cassavetes's voice saying he earns his dough as an actor so he can make his independent movies, none of which has been a blockbuster for him.Back to the plot: Cosmo can't pay the debt. Mort acts as Cosmo's friend and offers him a meeting with the bosses to see what can be worked out. It's a shocker: The bosses tell Cosmo he can kill a certain Chinese bookie, and the debt will be cancelled. They actually give him a decent briefing on the location, where the bookie is to be found, how to get there, what security is present and so forth. They give him a stolen gun and a stolen car, let him tear up the marker for the $23,000 and send him on his way. It's clear that if he doesn't follow through, he's a dead man.Surprisingly, Cosmo actually succeeds in the assassination. Cosmo earns the respect of Mort and Flo, another of the underlings used as muscle by the boss. (Flo is played by Carey.) This respect does him a good turn or two, but the bottom line is that the hoods did not expect him to succeed and since he has, he's got to be rubbed out because they fear he'll tie the killing to them. Cosmo's luck keeps running, and he survives their attempts to kill him. However, Cosmo has been shot in the torso. He returns to his club and makes sure it's still running as it should, then goes outside to stand on the sidewalk, as he often does. His jacket is red with his blood, and we leave Cosmo there. I'm in doubt of his survival -- if the wound doesn't get him, I can't believe the mobsters will let him live. But we don't find out.One of the problems with the movie is that for all Gazzara's charm, the character of Cosmo Vitelli is not a charming man. He has little to no interest in his dancers as people, using them as escorts when he goes out. Rachael (Azizi Johari, a Playboy Playmate) is clearly in love with him, but he doesn't return it. Cosmo's goal is to have a joint that draws a crowd. With a character that is basically not likable, many people have trouble relating to the film.Another issue with Cassavetes films is that Mr. Cassavetes is fascinated by character, so he does character studies. The plot does not drive the film, the characters do. "The Killing of a Chinese Bookie" is driven by Gazzara's performance as Cosmo. The issues are (1) for whatever reason, Cosmo is in love with the concept of being the owner of a strip joint -- it's his view of himself, it's what makes him happy; (2) Cosmo is deeply flawed; (3) to preserve his view of himself, Cosmo will do anything, including murder. I wonder how much of Cosmo is Cassavetes. I'll never know, but my take on it is that what Cosmo goes through is a metaphor for the blood, sweat, and tears Mr. Cassavetes goes through for each movie he made. For Cosmo, the blood is real, and his survival is in doubt at the end of the movie. I'm confident Cassavetes felt that at the end of each movie he pulled off.The character of Cosmo may be Cassavets, and I wonder about his views of his cast and crew after seeing Cosmo's relationship with his performers and Cassavetes's casting and scripting of the performers. Some have problems with Mr. Sophistication and the performances at the club, but I wonder if they relate to Cassevetes's problems with cast and crew making movies. It's another thing I'll never know, but it's difficult to believe Cassavetes was that cynical about his cast and crew. I have no clue. For another view of the director as manipulative jerk, see William H. Macy in David Mamet's "State and Main."My favorite Cassavetes movie is "A Woman Under the Influence" starring Gena Rowlands and Peter Falk. Ms. Rowlands was nominated for an Academy Award for this role. She was married to John Cassavetes, and they made ten films together.

Cosmo Vitelli is the man, the man… ager with whom you must cut the bullshit and talk straight. And speaking of straight, he's definitely one of the manliest men who's neither a cop, nor a criminal, the man is a strip joint owner in Los Angeles. And from the first minutes of the film, he exudes a sense of magnetic self-confidence and charismatic toughness that automatically wins your sympathy; hence my deliberate abuse of the word 'man'.Ben Gazzara, at the pinnacle of his collaboration with director John Cassavetes, perfectly embodies the characteristics of the self-made-man in his forties, with a remarkable capability never to flinch even in the most extreme situations. His suave voice would make any female heart melt while his enigmatic look combined with a tense smile could betray a small ounce of sensitivity, but any true hint of vulnerability is totally masked behind the naturally cool strength of Cosmo Vitelli. And this feeling is reinforced by the context in which we discover him, when he's just finished to pay a longstanding debt.And Cosmo, while relieved from the debt of that sleazy loser, doesn't hesitate to finally express all the contempt he had for him, with a smile that tells a lot about his nerve. Talk about a way to set a great character, whenever we follow Cosmo, we trust him, for one thing, we almost feel like one of his strippers when he takes them to the poker game to celebrate the end of his debtor's position, exhibiting them as so many trophies and highlights of his personal success. Cosmo is ballsy a la Tony Montana and exudes respect like Vito Corleone. He's a man from a man and a woman's point of view. He's not 'Il Padrino', he's 'Il Padrone'.But in an ironic twist, this respectable figure who deals with his club audience like a magician with his cards and acts with his strippers as a responsible fatherly figure taking care of his protégées, this man will commit a mistake by contracting a new debt from men far above the level of threat from the previous loan shark. And then, there's an immediate contradiction between Cosmo with the three beautiful girls, with the limo and that confident smile, and the new loser's condition he's suddenly stuck in. And while the guys ask for money and get more and more menacing, Cosmo tries to handle them his way, but even Cosmo's way sometimes doesn't work. In a lucid resignation, Cosmo understands there's no use to get impressed by Timothy Carey's character who carries naturally villainous features or the hypocritically friendly look of Mort, played by Seymour Cassel, but he knows damn well that these guys mean business, and he only wants to show them that he wouldn't be the easier nut to crack.These are the parameters to start with, and it's surprising how they deviate from Cassavetes' usual tone. John Cassavetes cared less about telling a story than plunging you into an engaging human experience, it didn't need a beginning or an end, any emotion could provide its own thrills or, on the contrary, remain neutral in the most frustrating but realistically anticlimactic aspect of life. Still, it's about how people deal with a specific situation, about their emotional struggle, there's no mission, no hero or villain in Cassavetes' films, it's about raw experiences from which you could take your own insights. This is the startling first impression of "The Killing of a Chinese Bookie" : visually, it looks like a Cassavetes film that borrowed the rough and gripping style of Scorsese's "Mean Streets" with an interesting noir feeling, and plot-wise, the movie features what seems to be a hero, and surely what seems to be villains, it features a mission, hell it's even in the title! … but as I said, this is only a 'first impression'. Actually, the crime doesn't even consecrate the true meaning lying beneath the story. It's not about a man who must kill someone to cancel out a debt, it's about a man who only wishes to run his business while he's victim of a harassment that deprives him from his only source of happiness and life comfort. It's as simple as that. At one crucial moment, so different in the general mood of the film, Cosmo finally opens his heart to deliver what he believes to be the truest secret of happiness : being comfortable, loving what you do, with never caring of the adversity that would try to prevent you from a sincere enjoyment. At this moment, you forget about the killing.Why a strip-joint? Why that "Crazy Horse" club that doesn't even feature very entertaining acts? Because this is Cosmo's world, Cassavetes makes it appealing by a sensitive direction focusing more on the human aspect of the relationships between Cosmo and his girls and 'Mr. Sophistication', and by contrast, the gloomier and darker scenes involving the crime and its aftermath, some moments where your eyes can hardly perceive what is happening. It's all about playing with darkness and light, and in this game, Cosmo's profession plays a crucial role, and it's only justice if he manages accomplish his mission and then to escape thanks to his professionalism. Finally the film reveals itself to be a tribute for people who try to stay faithful to their ideals despite all the adversity, and all the attempts to stop them.The film is Cassavetes' allegory describing his sensation of suffocation while harassed by a system trying to prevent him from accomplishing his work the way he wants. He couldn't live, breath, play his game because of the system, and it's extraordinary that he managed to translate these frustrations into a film that stands out on its own merit regardless of any symbolical interpretation. And Ben Gazzara's (so unfairly underrated) performance is the soul of the movie's profound humanity, as he makes this story not just business, but also personal ...

763.And the question is: How many times do we get to see a close-up of Ben Gazzara rubbing his hand over his face while failing to convey ANY emotion in John Cassavetes' "The Killing Of A Chinese Bookie"? I suppose film fans have to be admired for their open-minded attitudes... no matter how terrible a film is some group of moviegoers somewhere will declare it "brilliant," maybe even "genius." In fact, some movies get MORE critical acclaim the more awful they are: if I filmed a brick wall for two solid hours and added a soundtrack of birds chirping I just might earn an Oscar nomination. At least I'd have a better film than this one."The Killing of a Chinese Bookie" is- for lack of a better description- a character-driven crime film. It is also an endurance test: scenes are stretched to mind-numbing length while messy, improvised dialogue flies by and crashes to the floor, and the bulk of the film is devoted to watching the extremely unrealistic floor show at a strip-club/cabaret owned by Gazzara's "Cosmo" character.First of all, are we really supposed to believe that anyone would pay to see such a morbid and depressing show? Men go to strip clubs to see pink parts, to throw singles and get drunk and bust a nut in the champagne room. Here Cassavetes wants us to believe that the girls dance in poorly-choreographed theme numbers while a fat, flamboyant MC sings torch songs in front of kindergarten-quality cardboard props. And every now and again one of the girls pops a nipple. The idea of this passing for adult entertainment is as absurd today as it was in 1976; this is a director indulging in pointlessly-maudlin dramatics. Sadly these sequences are ten times better than the rest of the film.Gazzara incurs gambling debts with some local mobsters, and unfortunately for us the director included every frame of this action-free sequence. The movie is padded out with silences, lingering takes, fatal closeups and characters groaning for no particular reason. I know what Cassavetes was going for here, I truly do, but he does it to such a cloying extreme that I ended up going numb within the first fifteen minutes. A slowly-paced film that gives actors time to emote and breathe on screen can be wonderful... but there's so little going on in terms of character and story that the style becomes a stunt, and a grating one at that.The mob strong-arms Cosmo into killing a Chinese bookie in order to pay off his gambling debt, and the sequence is so anti-climactic that it's almost laughable. He walks in to the Chinaman's house- supposedly a heavily-guarded fortress- with about as much difficulty as walking into a local Taco Bell. His escape involves a light jog and a bus ride (exact change, please) and then he's back at his club to watch his girls do their show, blissfully unaware that the mob now intends to kill him to cover up their tracks.And so we move into the best sequence of the film: the scenes with Timothy Carey. Carey was a character actor- truly insane- with roles in "Paths of Glory," "The Killing," and "The World's Greatest Sinner." Its only when he's on screen that the film is alive and gains some sense of purpose... even with an underdeveloped character and questionable directing Carey manages to create a lasting impression. It's too bad he vanishes on a whim that plays like a bad plot device, leaving us to another hour of nothingness.Oh, by the way, Cosmo was evidently shot in the belly while whacking the Coolie, a scene the director just didn't feel like filming! Now he's walking around with what is in reality one of the most bloody, painful wounds to the human body- but somehow Cosmo holds in all the blood and feels none of the pain! (Kinda clashes with Mr. Cassavetes' quest for Absolute Reality). The magic bullet wound simply disappears while Cosmo visits his girlfriends, evades two mafia gunmen, gives a motivational speech to his employees and performs a one-man monologue on the cabaret stage... HOORAY! Being shot in the gut was never this much fun!Or boring. Even this implausible sequence is filmed in COMA-VISION, and you'll be praying for a bullet to your own abdomen just to make the hurting stop. Look, I could go on like this. The movie is a pretentious waste of time... Cassavetes drowns a potentially dynamic crime script with endlessly hollow filler and indulges his actors to paralysis. If you think you can make it, I wish you luck, but as a guy genuinely trying to save you time I urge you to avoid this one.GRADE: D