"The Killing of a Chinese Bookie" is Pure John Cassavettes For Better and For Worse

John Cassavette's gritty, bruising neo-noir The Killing of a Chinese Bookie sags in places (particularly in its unnecessarily extended night club scenes); but when it embraces its crime drama, it's a thrilling, intense, audacious piece of film-making. Ben Gazarra is fantastically sleazy as strip club owner Cosmo Vitelli, who acquires a gambling debt that he can't pay off; in order to reduce the debt and save his club, he is forced to commit an unthinkable criminal act, kill a "Chinese bookie". But nothing goes quite as planned in the story. Cassavette's directorial style gives the film a loose, languorous quality that doesn't always tonally suit its subject matter. It's shot in an uncomfortably intimate, claustrophobic style with lots of close-ups. Cassavette didn't compromise, even in the face of a genre narrative, which surely will displease those going in for its action rather than its philosophical musing about human nature.  

Grade: B