The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976)

 

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I have to admit that if feels odd to write reviews of forty+ year old movies at a time when it seems like the world has gone crazy, sort of like fiddling while Rome is burning, but I guess there is something comforting about dreaming yourself away to a simpler time. Or was it, really?

My first 76 movie is “The Killing of a Chinese Bookie”, a John Cassavetes movie. There are two things you know when you are going to watch a Cassavetes movie: It is going to feel like you have been invited inside somebody’s real life and two, that whatever is the theme the take on it will be different from what you are used to. That sounds great, really, but in the case of “The Killing of a Chinese Bookie” this is a sad and depressive life in a dismal world.

Cosmo Vittelli (Ben Gazzara) is a nightclub owner. Not one of those glitzy places, but the seediest kind imaginable. I cannot say I have much experience with nightclubs, but “Crazy Horse West” is the epitome of poor taste and low appeal. It may have aspirations at art, but what it produces is pathetic and boils down to tits. It is one of those places that make you feel dirty and immensely sad. Yet Cosmo is proud of his place, and he genuinely likes his girls. It makes him feel like a hotshot and in his head, it is a lot more than what we see.

Unfortunately, Cosmo has a bad gambling habit and when he loses 23.000$ to a bunch of gangsters he is forced to take the shitty deal to kill a competing Chinese gangster to get out of his debt. Against all odds Cosmo pulls it off and survives which was not according to plan, so now the gangsters are after him.

The slice of life style is so typical of Cassavetes and in this case it gives us a lot of insight into the life of Cosmo Vittelli and his world. It is gritty, people are not that smart, conversation is often dumb and people think they are a lot cooler than they actually are. As if they kid themselves by pretending to have a better life than they really have. This depression overlays everything like a duvet, making their only chance at staying sane and afloat to believe in the lies they tell themselves. Which is essentially Cosmo’s speech at the end of the movie.

Yeah, I know, this is supposed to be a crime story about an assassination and a bunch of gangsters, but if found the plot quite irrelevant. This is not really about murders and violence, but about a life where you have to take shitty deals. You are an imperfect being and that is the kind of balls life throws at you. This is all about Cosmo and his desperate struggle to stay afloat and pretend all is great.

A lot has been made out of this really being about Cassavetes himself and his film crew trying stay afloat, making the actors a parallel to Cosmo’s strippers, exposing themselves for peanuts and getting disrespected for it. Maybe that is so, I do not know. I understand the story well enough without that level of narcissism.

“The Killing of a Chinese Bookie” is not a bad film, but it is a film where not much happens and what happens is rather unimportant and it therefore feels empty to watch. When it ends, it feels abrupt, in the middle of the story, but that is because the real story of Cosmo has gone on for long enough. Those who watch it as a crime story are going to get disappointed and those who do not, will just get super depressed. And those watch it for the tits will just end up feeling dirty.

I know I should appreciate the movie, but it just made me more depressed than I already am.