The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976)

Directed by

John Cassavetes

Genre

drama film, crime film, art film

Country

United States

Runtime

2h 15m

Rated

R

Rating

7.0 of 10 from 296 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A strip club owner owes a gambling debt to mobsters. They force him to commit a murder to pay it off. He struggles to navigate the violent underworld while trying to protect his club.

grittyrawmelancholicslow-burnbleaktensecharacter-drivenunsettlingvisceral

What happens

The Killing of a Chinese Bookie is a 1976 American crime film, written and directed by John Cassavetes and starring Ben Gazzara. A rough and gritty film, this is the second of their three collaborations, following Husbands and preceding Opening Night. Timothy Carey, Seymour Cassel, Morgan Woodward, Meade Roberts, and Azizi Johari appear in supporting roles. Gazzara's character of the formidable strip club owner Cosmo Vittelli was in part based on an impersonation he did for his friend Cassavetes in the 1970s. In an interview for the Criterion Collection in the mid-2000s, Gazzara stated that he believed that Vittelli, who cares deeply about the rather peculiar "art" aspect of his nightclub routines but is faced with patrons who are only there for naked girls and care little about the artistic value of any of the routines, was a double of sorts of Cassavetes himself. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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