The Killing of a Chinese Bookie

Plot synopsis:
The film, set in California, opens with Cosmo Vittelli (Ben Gazzara) making the final payment on a longstanding gambling debt to a sleazy loanshark (played by the film's producer Al Ruban). It turns out, that the person who Vitelli had just repaid his debt to is associated with the mob and sets up Vitelli by bringing larger fish gangsters to Vittelli's artistic club. Vitelli and Mort (Seymour Cassel) share talk and conversation about the club ownership business, Vitelli orders Mort and his party bottles of Dom Perignon. Mort then sets Vitelli up by offering an open invitation to gamble at the mobster's club, all expenses paid, other than the gambling gains or losses. To celebrate his long-anticipated freedom, cabaret owner Vittelli has an expensive night out with his three favorite dancers ("Margo", "Rachael" and "Sherry"). The evening culminates in a poker game in which Vittelli loses $23,000 (2016, $97,500 equivalent) returning him to the debtor's position he had just left. Using the debt as leverage, his mob creditors coerce him into agreeing to perform a "hit" on a rival. Vittelli is led to believe that his target is a small-time criminal of minor consequence, the Chinese bookie of the film's title; but in fact, he is the boss of the Chinese mafia, "the heaviest cat on the West Coast." Vittelli manages to kill the man and several of his bodyguards, but is severely wounded before escaping.
In addition to the potentially fatal gunshot wound he sustains, Vittelli comes to realize that his assignment was a set-up: that his mob employers double-crossed him and had no expectation he would survive his debut as a hitman. Vitelli loses his "black" and "beautiful" girlfriend, Rachel (Azizi Johari) and the support of her loving mother due to the chaos and the gunshot wound he refuses to acknowledge. It also becomes evident that due to Vitelli's direct combat experience in Korea and his snap execution of the West Coast Chinese gangster leader and his bodyguards, that, in fact, his Italian gangster foes are "amateurs" in comparison to him. Vitelli fatally shoots Mort but Mort's mob companion is left in a warehouse firing off rounds into warehouse walls, hunting for Vitelli. Forced into a corner again, Vittelli manages to kill or elude his assailants, but the film ends with no indication of whether Vittelli will survive his ordeal, as the show at his club goes on. Vitelli (with a bullet in his side) informs his artists that Rachel has left the production team and has the "flu" or has moved on to "bigger and better things", never accounting for the lost love potential between Vitelli, Rachel and her mother who said she loved Vitelli but wanted him out of her house until he sought medical attention to remove the bullet.

Tags: bleak, neo noir

Review:
As Cosmo Vitelli, the strip-joint owner who's a clown who thinks he's a king, the sublimely reptilian Ben Gazzara leans into an offstage mike and tells the audience, "And if you have any complaints--any complaints at all--we'll throw you right out on your ass." Like Jake LaMotta, or Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant, Cosmo is a walking aria of male self-destruction.
To pay his debts, Cosmo agrees to murder a Chinese kingpin the L.A. mob has marked for death--but that only gives the barest indication of the strange, ecstatic poetry of Cassavetes' greatest and farthest-out-on-a-limb movie.
The movie is a strangely crumpled form of film noir; a classic Cassavetes character portrait, with more than the usual romanticism and self-disgust; a super-subliminal essay on Vietnam and Watergate; and an example of a one-of-a-kind lyricism that's closer to 2001 than a gangster picture.
A film like John Cassavetes' "The Killing of A Chinese Bookie" is one of those films that Roger Ebert often says "either grabs you or leaves you".
Ben Gazzara is excellent as Cosmo Vitelli, the nightclub owner who needs to perform the title deed to save his club.
The dirty quality of images (in some moments bewilderingly amateurish, ins others incredibly sophisticated), the acting, the disjointed plot, the weirdness of some scenes (like the one in the car parking), Gazzara's sublime acting, the wonderful choice of places and times...
The film is full of extremely memorable spaces, years later I could recall Cosmo standing in the entrance of his club, the backalley where he's beaten up, the empty highway, the phonebooth in the middle of nowhere, running from the Chinaman's house.Here, Cassavetes stretches two things.
In this film, Ben Gazzara plays Cosmo Vitelli, a nightclub owner who lives way beyond his means and manages to get into a massive gambling debt with the mob.
There are many slow passages (here I'm referring to the 1976 original version), many moments of embarrassing awkwardness, as you are forced to watch extended sequences filled with players who aren't any more talented or skilled than those at your local summer stock production or junior high school play.Yet, it's very difficult not to be compelled by the story, especially as embodied in the character of Cosmo Vitelli, who Ben Gazzara seems to channel effortlessly, as if he were a second, transparent skin.Cosmo is a fascinating character.
He swills $100 bottles of Champagne, cruises around town in his plush chauffeured Caddy, an entourage of bimbettes in tow, usually to a dive mob-run poker joint that inevitably lands him in massive debt.He would be an easy character to scorn or mock in another film, but not as Gazzara and Cassavetes portray him.
It's a refreshingly human response in a movie that only contains more of the same.It's not a conventional audience pleaser by any means, but if you've watched other Cassavetes pictures and like his candid stream-of-consciousness style, give the 1978 edited version of "Bookie" a watch before you see the original.
THE KILLING OF A Chinese BOOKIE is John Cassavetes fascinating look into the world of Cosmo Vitelli, owner of the Crazy Horse West, a California strip club.
A movie which a friend from a film class in university hated so much she broke up with her boyfriend because he liked it, "The Killing of a Chinese Bookie" became my first Cassavetes film when I watched it this morning.
Widely seen as a misfire on release, extremely divisive now, with many regarding it as a self-indulgent experiment of the very worst variety and others as one of the greatest examples of independent American cinema in the 1970's, my take on "The Killing of a Chinese Bookie" is somewhere between the two extremes.It's an admirable film in concept, a sort of gangster movie focused entirely on characters, with very natural dialogue (surprisingly most of it was scripted, I would've guessed it was improvised for the most part) and some interesting visuals, as interesting as Cassavetes could manage with his miniscule budget anyhow.
Moreover, it's a character piece in which none of the characters are even remotely interesting, unless you're the sort who pats films on the back for daring to portray a character who has a certain occupation as something other than an archetype.Now of course I will get people telling me I'm an absolute moron and can't handle anything slow or lacking in explosions and cleavage, but many times during "The Killing of a Chinese Bookie" I couldn't help but think back to "The Conversation".
This is Cassavetes at his self-indulgent worst.The only thing I liked about this movie was Ben Gazarra, who I've always thought was a fine and overlooked actor.Grade: F.
He murders the target half way through the film, who turns out to be a bigger fry than just a bookie, and then realises he's been set up by the hoodlums.John Cassavetes, however, decided to concentrate on the characters rather than the action so you see lots of interactions between Vitelli, his girls and the gangsters and lots of shots of Vitelli thinking.
The movie plays out like a slice out of real life, and presents the characters and the story in a more involved and human way than I have seen in any other movie, but in the end everything is destroyed by one gunshot.This movie has been criticized by other commentators for being unengaging, for having no clear resolve, for being self indulgent, for having too many meandering scenes, irrelevant to the story, but frankly those are all a matter of aesthetic and are totally unimportant as to the quality of the film, for clearly, I as well as a lot of other people, greatly enjoyed the aesthetic elements of the film.
My dad was shot in the army, and just a shot in the leg will cause you to lose litres of blood if you don't stop it, and moreover if he did not receive the blood transfusion he would have bled to death within 15 minutes.My ultimate question is, lack of resolve, and far fetched plot aside, if the director was simply going to have his main character go throughout the 2nd half of the entire film with a severe gun shot wound, as if there was no gunshot wound at all, then what was he trying to prove by it?
Fascinating Cassavetes work has Ben Gazzara playing Cosmo Vitelli, a California night club owner who, after racking up a huge gambling debt, is given the opportunity to clear it by killing a Chinese bookie.
Cassavetes's distinctive style allows for a raw emotional feel that couldn't have been captured by any other director, and, like A Woman Under the Influence, it puts the viewer directly into a very real world populated by very real characters.
Now some time and many films later, and my opinion has changed very little on this particular piece."The Killing of a Chinese Bookie" revolves around strip club owner Cosmo Vitelli, a man who carries himself with swagger and dignity, who loves his joint, the Crazy Horse West, who loves the workers within it, but who is a man of great vice.
After paying off one gambling debt, he falls into another, but this time from mobsters who offer him an alternative to paying: to murder a Chinese bookie.The experience of this film will differ depending on the version.
Beyond the merits of it's story, "The Killing of a Chinese Bookie" is an experience, akin to the films of Andrei Tarkovsky in giving the sense that when the movie's done, one has not simply seen a great movie but been on a journey (while the 1978 version feels almost rushed in comparison)On a technical level, the film is low budget and it shows, but like films such as "Breathless" and "Mean Streets", the low budget, raw feel enhances the mood, especially of the night scene.
'Chinese Bookie' makes its impact because of mood, character, Ben Gazarra's performance, and an attention scene to scene where people are in the lowest common denominator (a strip club, a gangster's office or car, on the run).
While Cassavetes has the themes that ran through the pulpiest stories and the most thrilling thrillers of the 40s and 50s, its still Casavetes through and through.Like many of the director's best work, too, the premise is there plain and simple, and it's always the context of the dialog, the connections the actors have, the time taken for a cut-away, that makes the big differences.
The consequences are not the simple 'scene-of-the-crime, cops-get-involved-good-triumphs' kind of deal, however.Surrounding this premise are scenes that verge on the meditative; a lot of times we see Cosmo looking on at his eccentric club, or with his 'girls', and Gazarra makes him a curious sort, a man who leads a crude, mismanaged life but is never vulgar, never even mean, and beneath his calm exterior following the murder - one of the most startling killing scenes ever shot and edited, not just for the obvious other casualties - is a loneliness, almost a longing for something else.
And the way that Cassavetes opens and closes his film is most intriguing of all (if one is still watching by the end, as mentioned it might turn off some viewers expecting a more conventional narrative)- we see the singer, who has no self-confidence following night after night being booed while trying to have his own unique style in singing for the girls to dance to, and finally he just walks off after not being able to take any more (this is the last shot, following an ambiguous end for Cosmo, as his fate is left open to chance or damnation).
There's almost a parallel that can be made not just to the singer and Cosmo (Comso being booed off or not successful, in a sense, from life in general), but to Cassavetes himself.It's strange and provocative, like a story taken for granted- of the gambler having to pay debts in an unforgiving underworld setting- given some fresh life and a sense of possibilities for what can be done in the genre.
When Los Angeles strip club owner Ben Gazzara (as Cosmo Vittelli) can't pay a $23,000 gambling debt, mobsters order him to carry out "The Killing of a Chinese Bookie".
This is how you know director John Cassavetes is there, behind the curtain, slowly revealing his protagonist's naked psyche; it's a strip tease.******** The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (2/15/76) John Cassavetes ~ Ben Gazzara, Timothy Carey, Seymour Cassel, Robert Phillips.
It's not quite like that, but, Cassavetes makes clever use of his setting - the theatricality of the club's acts, the strip-teases, the travelogue numbers - to say important things about his characters, about the painful gap between projected self-image, or ideals, and the somewhat tawdrier 'reality', itself stylised and ritualised to a disturbing degree.
This in itself isn't much of an end - it is really the brave acting of Gazzara et al that creates the illusion - and Cassavetes makes clever use of film noir stylistic cliches - shadows, obtrusive decor, strange angles - to emphasise his 'realism'.It really works.
It just felt like one was left alone in the environment of the movie to experience what was taking place, subjectively and without interference.The only director I can say who has anything similar in his prowess (that I am aware of) is Scorsese, with whom it turns out Cassavetes developed the idea for the story of the movie some time before making it.This is a work of genius in my opinion.
NOTE: This film was recommended to me by John Henry Westhead for "Steve Pulaski Sees It," and the following review is a review of the 108 minute cut of the film instead of the 135 minute cut.The opening shot of John Cassavetes' The Killing of a Chinese Bookie lingers on Cosmo Vittelli (Ben Gazzara) as he leans against a wall that has a painted mural of a scantily clad woman, a fitting metaphor for the film that follows.
If only the film wasn't so disproportionately focused on Vitelli, even when nothing truly significant is occurring with his character, and we got more insight into the lives of his dancers could this be an all-encompassing long at a nightclub and not just the central part of it.Starring: Ben Gazzara, Al Ruban, Timothy Agoglia Carey, Seymour Cassel, Alice Friedland, and Azizi Johari.
Starring Ben Gazzara as sleazy strip club owner and tragic loser Cosmo Vitelli, the film is shot in a distant and poetic documentary style reminiscent of Cassavetes' earlier film 'A Woman Under the Influence' (1974), and can be thought of as a sort of companion piece.The film follows Vitelli as he fails to pay Gambling debt, is given the task of pegging off a Chinese book-keeper, and ends up killing several Chinese men by accident - causing him to plunge into even deeper trouble with criminals.
It's a moving character study of a man in the claws of a desperate situation, and like most of Cassavetes' films is a forerunner to a lot of the indie filmmaking that came after it.An essential work by a director whose approach to capturing actors on camera inspired a generation of filmmakers, it is dark and foreboding in tone but also sublime and poetic in its use of meandering camera-work and close-ups.
One of the most bizarre parts of the film has it cutting away just when the mob hit man is about to track down Gazzara to rub him out in order to cover the mob's involvement with the Chinese bookie killing.
Forget that the film was directed by John Cassavetes or that it starred Ben Gazarra and just look at the story.
From the title we know that a Chinese Bookie is killed and we eventually discover that the Gazarra character must carry out a murder to pay off his gambling debt.
After A Woman Under the Influence, he thought it might be appealing to attempt a gangster picture to broaden himself by bartering the household suburbia of unhinged married couples for a more stylish setting, meeting the audience halfway with some customary Hollywood entertainment standards: tension, murder, betrayal, topless dancers.Cordial nightclub owner Cosmo Vitelli, already overdrawn with loan sharks, panders to his inopportune Achilles' heel for drinking and gambling, and ends up owing $23,000 to gangsters who insist he pay off the debt by executing a competitor of theirs, a mob boss whom they erroneously illustrate as a Chinese bookie.
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).
The movie stars Ben Gazzara as the lead character, Cosmo Vitelli.
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.
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.
"The Killing of a Chinese Bookie" is driven by Gazzara's performance as Cosmo.
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!
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.
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"?
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?
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.
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!
This time I watched "the killing of a Chinese bookie".It is a neo noir film, about a man (Cosmo) who is forced to terms with himself as a man.A strip club owner who thinks he's got the world by the balls, makes a fiesta when he pays off a gambling debt ending with a bigger one.