The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976) Faces Distribution/Drama-Thriller RT: 135 minutes Rated R (language, violence, nudity) Director: John Cassavetes Screenplay: John Cassavetes Music: Bo Harwood Cinematography: Mitchell Briet and Al Ruban Release date: February 15, 1976 (US) Cast: Ben Gazzara, Timothy Agoglia Carey, Seymour Cassel, Robert Phillips, Morgan Woodward, John Red Kullers, Al Ruban, Azizi Johari, Virginia Carrington, Meade Roberts, Alice Friedland, Donna Marie Gordon, Haji, Carol Warren, Derna Wong Davis, Kathalina Veniero, Val Avery. Box Office: N/A
Rating: ***
NOTE: This is a review of the original uncut 1976 version NOT the shorter re-edit that was released two years later. I’ll review that at a later date.
John Cassavetes’ crime drama The Killing of a Chinese Bookie is the very definition of “flawed masterpiece”. Much of his gritty neo-noir piece about gangsters and gamblers is very good; the problem is its length. It’s too long and I can tell you what needs to go. The main character, Cosmo Vittelli (Gazzara, Husbands), owns a L.A. nightclub modeled after Le Crazy Horse, a Parisian cabaret famous for its stage shows featuring nude dancers. Crazy Horse West does likewise. A singer known as Mr. Sophistication (Roberts), decked out in top hat, cape and drawn-on moustache, warbles tunes like “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love” while half-naked girls dance around him. It would be okay to show one number but Cassavetes gives us three or four “musical” sequences. Not only are they all terrible, they stop the film dead in its tracks each time. If not for these scenes, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie would be a great film.
Cosmo is what you call a sleaze albeit one that puts up a good front with his natty three-piece suits and showering his girls with luxuries like champagne and limo rides. He’s also a gambling addict. After making the final payment on a seven-year gambling debt, he puts himself right back in the hole with some gangsters by racking up a $23,000 poker debt. The leader Mort (Cassel, Faces) offers him a chance to completely wipe out his debt; all he has to do is kill a Chinese bookie named Ling. It takes some “persuading”, but Cosmo accepts Mort’s proposition. It’s a double cross, of course.
When The Killing of a Chinese Bookie sticks with its plot, it’s very good. Using his inimitable naturalistic style, Cassavetes drops the viewer into the seedy underbelly of L.A. amongst the shady types that orbit Cosmo. His club is located on a part of the Sunset Strip that doesn’t get a lot of human traffic. Day or night, it’s a depressing place. Even the stage numbers fail to evoke any sort of joy. It’s all part of the director’s grand scheme. Cassavetes makes films like no other filmmaker. When he works in a genre, he makes it his own. He’s like a jazz soloist doing riffs on familiar themes. He takes his time getting to the point. He allows the viewer a lot of time to take in the atmosphere he creates. He wants to give the viewer a feel for the world in which the action takes place. His style is an acquired taste; it’s decidedly not for everybody especially audiences used to today’s loud blockbuster vehicles.
Gazzara delivers an excellent performance as Cosmo, a man always out to impress even though it entails living beyond his means. He exudes self-confidence and self-delusion in equal measures. He can’t or won’t see that most others see right through his act. When he goes to pick up one of his girls for a night on the town, he enters her home and is told to wait outside. The truth is the man is a loser. It takes him less than 48 hours after he finishes paying off one big debt to amass another. Then he gets in over his head with dangerous types who will likely kill him whether or not he does what they ask. He can’t win at cards or at life yet you can’t feel too much sympathy for him because his problems are mostly of his own making. Gazzara gets the character and all of his complexities. It’s truly one for the books, his performance. Also good is Timothy Carey (the “Angel of Death” from D.C. Cab) as Mort’s enforcer Flo, a scary guy. When he asks for something, you better give it to him. He has a great scene with Gazzara in a dark parking garage late in the movie.
With all of its strong points, it’s a shame The Killing of a Chinese Bookie doesn’t reach its full potential. Even Gazzara admitted in an interview he hated this version because it was too long. I hope that the lousy, boring musical numbers are absent from the shorter cut. I can see the great film struggling to come out. It’s palpable. I’ll let you know what happens.
