Cosmo Vitelli (Ben Gazzara) considers himself quite a renaissance man. He owns and operates The Crazy Horse West, a Los Angeles strip club, where he tries to shed the image of these institutions as being sordid, sleazy pits of debauchery, attempting to redefine the industry and put “entertain” back into “adult entertainment”. However, behind closed doors, Cosmo is in a bit of a predicament – he has a gambling addiction, which has resulted in him incurring a large amount of debt, which forces him into the service of a group of corrupt gangsters, whose sinister business-like attitude to collecting the debt (arranging meetings, signing contracts and making deals – they run these illegal operations with the same casual nature any ethical businessman would) intimidates Cosmo, who is doing his best to try and pay them back, which is taking a lot longer than they would’ve liked. Luckily, he does see a way out – the gangsters inform him that should he want to reduce his debt, he can run a small errand for them: assassinate one of their rivals, a highly-successful Chinese businessman who is in conflict with the gang. Cosmo has no choice but to accept the task, and when he completes it successfully, he discovers there is a lot more to the plot than he imagined, and a near-fatal injury threatens to not only derail his professional career but also his personal life, as those closest to him start to flee from a man who is clearly more dangerous than he appears.

John Cassavetes made powerful, provocative cinema, films that challenged everything the audience believed to be factual, taking us on complex psychological journeys into the depths of human despair through unlikable but fascinating anti-heroes. The Killing of a Chinese Bookie is certainly not an exception. Occurring between two of Cassavetes’ masterpieces (A Woman Under the Influence and Opening Night), this film is a lot tougher and difficult to relate to, even if it is a terrific piece of independent storytelling. Much like the director’s very best works, we are thrown into the world of an ordinary individual who is under pressure from various forces in his or her life and has to navigate the disconcerting environment that only grows more sinister and inescapable the further they voyage on. When it comes to telling stories about the human condition, very few could ever do it nearly as well as Cassavetes, whose profound understanding of everything that makes us who we are truly riveting to watch, and his steadfast, earnest approach to filmmaking, prioritizing character development over visual style (even if his films have a certain rugged beauty them that makes them so distinctive) confirms that when he was in his prime (which luckily was for almost the entirety of his career, with the exception of his ill-fated final film), there was just no one better than him. The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, despite its sometimes unnavigable nature, is the perfect exemplification of precisely when Cassavetes was one of the best of his generation.

There are so many qualities that make a Cassavetes film not only so distinctive but so profoundly moving as well. One of his most brilliant skills was his ability to represent life in a manner that is so authentic, it verges on unsettling. His films are raw, realistic and difficult precisely because they reflect life as it is, showing the labyrinthine nature of existence without ever daring to venture into excess or unnecessary detail. He keeps everything in his films so simple, which is why they’re so compelling – there’s no need to look too deeply below the surface, because what the director does is find the common qualities of humanity in these stories, reflecting them through his characters and allowing the story to flourish into a steadfast, gritty piece of social realism that could’ve so easily been a trite melodrama had it not been for Cassavetes’ simple but effective approach to allowing the story to unfold by itself. The Killing of a Chinese Bookie is an active viewing experience – we aren’t ever given the answers to the innumerable quandaries posed throughout the work. In fact, the director seems to relish in his disdain for traditional structure – this film doesn’t have so much of a conventional narrative arrangement as it does a series of smaller moments and conversations that populate the film and work towards the larger story. Had this film just been about the central plot, it wouldn’t have even been a quarter of the length. By presenting us with scenes of the day-to-day life of the protagonist, this film allows us to understand him more and find some sympathy for him, as he is clearly not a man with much in the world, which is why this is such a harrowing film.

What makes The Killing of a Chinese Bookie so special is that it has some broad concepts that allow the film to flow, but it only truly soars not when we are focused on the assassination plot, but rather immersed in the more psychodramatic elements of the story, looking at the struggles the protagonist faces. This film, taken on its story alone, is nothing special – we’ve seen these kinds of stories before, when a well-meaning individual accidentally finds himself involved with a group of career criminals that manipulate him for their own gain, and have no problem betraying his trust in them for their own selfish goals (Cassavetes even starred in a similar film this same year, the exceptional Mikey and Nicky, which saw similar themes of gangsterism, loyalty and cold-blooded murder. One can only wonder how the two films influenced each other). Much like nearly every film he directed, Cassavetes is solely focused on looking at these characters as complex individuals that harbour intense, often disconcerting emotional struggle that only worsens as the venture deeper into their own emotional, spiritual and mental purgatories. The action in The Killing of a Chinese Bookie is so inconsequential to the best parts of the film, which see the interactions of these various characters, and it is most impressive when we are presented with a vision of our own humanity that is both terrifying and honest, with the director not putting in any effort to slow the pace of the moralistic degradation – the protagonist is sleazy, the mobsters deceptively charming and the regular people impatient and unforgiving. It isn’t easy to find a traditionally likeable character in this film, or in most of the filmmaker’s more gritty works, but its effectively solely because its real, and despite some of his minor shortcomings when it comes to directing, Cassavetes proved himself to be a profoundly brilliant filmmaker, and The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, while certainly not the definitive masterpiece of his career, is still a solid, fascinating film.

Another distinctive quality of his films, and the main reason why he is such an iconoclast of independent cinema, is that Cassavetes, in his effort to represent reality as accurately as possible, made sure to choose the finest actors to collaborate with, rather than to just direct – a Cassavetes film belongs just as much to the actors as it does to him. It is quite clear that he has his roots in theatre – not only as a writer and director, but also an actor. Very often, when a film is called “theatrical”, that’s normally used as a shorthand for a lack of visual prowess and an overabundance of dialogue that distracts from the diminished, perhaps even cheap, production value. Cassavetes is one of the only filmmakers who could make something that is both perfectly acceptable for both the stage and the screen, and his films, while certainly verbose, are far more than just recorded plays – they are intricate character dramas that look at specific individuals and their plight in a hopeless modern world – and his compassion in creating compelling characters, regardless of their role in the story, goes back to his hardworking days as an actor himself. Cassavetes’ films very much feel like they have naturally progressed with the theatre – the repertory cast of regular collaborators, the simple filmmaking and the focus on the story rather than the execution, all point towards a deeper connection between the sometimes incompatible but still similar realms of theatre and film. His deconstructive methods to telling a story allows The Killing of a Chinese Bookie to remain deeply captivating even if it isn’t traditionally resonant. This film finds itself at its most gripping when it occupies that ambigious space between reality and fiction, with the resonance of the story for the director (apparently, Cassavetes was inspired by his struggles with realizing his own ambitions in a harsh industry earlier in his career) intermingling with his fascination with crime stories. The Killing of a Chinese Bookie isn’t necessarily a crime film, but rather a heartwrenching character study that is contextualized by criminal activity but can come to be repurposed as any struggle against one’s own vices.

It would obviously be inappropriate to end this review without talking about the quality of Cassavetes’ films that stand as his most profoundly brilliant – his actors. We’ve spoken about how his works are rooted in theatre, and how they’re character studies more than they are coherent stories. None of this would have been possible without the director’s attention to detail, and his terrific use of actors. Ben Gazzara was one of his finest collaborators, with The Killing of a Chinese Bookie being the second of their three collaborations. This film is also the only one where Gazzara occupies the leading role, with Husbands and Opening Night seeing the actor play pivotal supporting roles. Gazzara was a unique actor – his doe-like blue eyes told stories no words possibly could, and he managed to convey more with one fleeting glance or subtle expression that would have been difficult for many other actors. Cassavetes always opted for actors that he felt were more authentic – very few of his regular collaborators could be considered movie stars in the traditional sense (even if Gena Rowlands proved herself to be one of the finest performers of all time in their many collaborations), and Gazzara certainly had an everyman quality that would normally be relegated to smaller parts in bigger films, but used brilliantly here, with his common sensibilities serving the character well. Cosmo Vitelli is not a particularly likeable character – he peddles sex as a form of entertainment and has a manipulative hold on his employees, who will go to any lengths to gain his approval. Yet, we just can’t be against him.

There’s nothing moving or endearing about the kind of character Gazzara plays, but it doesn’t appear like they were trying to make a character the audience is supposed to like, but rather one that can be the channel through which the complexities of the story can flow, as we see Cosmo deteriorate into a man on the verge of a nervous break down, being under the influence of more sinister forces that not only make him question the humanity of others, but also his own, which sends him into a harrowing spiral of mental and physical degradation. Cassavetes always works so well with his actors, and whether it be with his regular collaborators like Gazzara or Seymour Cassel (who is at his most sleazy in the role of a charming but manipulative mouthpiece for the gangsters), or others who did not work with him as often, like the legendary Timothy Carey, who is certainly amongst the strangest actors of his generation, and gives an almost otherworldly performance as an enigmatic but still empathetic gangster who seems to be the only one out of the villains in this film who seems to possess some semblance of compassion, even if it is only momentarily. When watching a film like The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, it isn’t difficult to conclude that working with Cassavetes would have been a privilege for any actor – his ability to extract every possible iota of potential from his performers was second to none, and he consistently proved himself to be someone who is sincerely passionate about including strong, interesting characters in his films, and it is clearly demonstrated here, as he gives everyone one of these actors terrific characters worthy of their talents, and allowing them to take on these roles in their own way, which result in truly astounding performances.

The Killing of a Chinese Bookie is an excellent film – John Cassavetes made a complex manifesto that speaks towards the human condition and the darkest recesses of our society, whereby people with vices and addictions are forced into uncomfortable, and often criminal, situations as a result of their desires. Ben Gazzara is tremendous as the main character, giving a spirited performance that relies on his genial exterior and underlying menace, allowing him to fashion a compelling character from some qualities that are far from admirable. As a crime film, it’s exceptional – well-written, beautifully-shot and tightly-edited, which gives it an ominous, unsettling atmosphere that benefits the film greatly and allows it to be one of the best of the period. However, where this film really makes an impression is when we look at it as a character study. It is constructed as one individual’s battle against a much larger entity, and his feelings of overwhelming despair in a world that disregards anyone without power or influence, neither of which Cosmo possesses. The Killing of a Chinese Bookie may not reach the heights of some of Cassavetes’ most profound works, but it is an essential component of his filmography and a potent reminder that at his peak, Cassavetes was an unprecedented genius, a writer who could compose the most realistic characters in the most evocative situations, and a filmmaker who could find the undeniable beauty in the most simple of shots. The director’s work has always remained particularly important, not only in terms of independent cinema but as integral elements of filmmaking as a whole, and if The Killing of a Chinese Bookie does nothing else, it reminds us of the potent power of simple but effective storytelling that is made with compassion and integrity, with the results not being anything less than spellbinding.