- Whether or not he knows it, Cosmo Vittelli (Ben Gazzara) is a born loser. As The Killing of a Chinese Bookie opens, he's paying off what we assume was a gambling debt and swearing he never wants to see the loan shark again. A week later, he's over $20,000 in hock at a local gambling house managed by a smooth-talker named Weil (Seymour Cassel), enforced by a heavy called Flo (Timothy Carey), and owned by various other anonymous bosses and accountants (Morgan Woodward and John Kullers). Unlike his previous debtors, these guys don't want to get paid by installment. They'd rather Cosmo do them one simple favor that you can guess at from the film's title.
- But Cosmo doesn't have any experience with that particular brand of favor. Professionally, the man has devoted his life to running an almost amusingly unappealing California strip club that unsuccessfully strives to introduce art into a context where perhaps it has never been comfortable. But the club is Cosmo's baby, and he beams with pride every night when "Mr. Sophistication" (Meade Roberts) waxes poetic as the girls (Alice Friedland, Donna Gordon) slowly lose their clothes. He's even dating one of his dancers (Azizi Johari), and it would never occur to him that doing so could create problems at work. He's a sincere guy, but a loser nonetheless.
- But about that assigment to kill the Chinese bookie. Cosmo's first attempt is a complete nonstarter that diverts into taking his girls to a kung-fu flick. That earns him a few punches in the gut courtesy of Flo. The second attempt is derailed by a highway breakdown that grants Cosmo the opportunity, in a hilarious example of misplaced priorities, to call for an update on that night's strip show. The third attempt is far more successful, although dumb luck is perhaps the dominant force in helping Cosmo to escape. Now it's time to see whether it has occurred to Cosmo that a random Chinese bookie probably wouldn't live in a palatial home guarded by watchtowers and security dogs.
- Like John Cassavetes' previous film, A Woman Under the Influence, this one owes a lot to its actors. Gazzara, Cassel, and Carey all have such expressive faces, grabbed lovingly by Cassavetes in a multitude of close-ups, that it doesn't matter that much of what they're saying is a faux-realistic mishmash of half-baked thoughts and stories. Carey, in particular, whose bizarre closed-mouth manner of speaking immediately made me remember him from The Killing, is such a distinctive character actor that he's always completely captivating to watch. The rest of the film is unfortunately not quite as engrossing, especially in scenes that laboriously detail the strip club's painfully misconceived attempts at entertainment. Maybe it was a mistake for me to watch Cassavetes' original 135-minute cut instead of the 108-minute version that made up the film's 1978 re-release. Regardless, it doesn't take much imagination to picture Cassavetes, like Cosmo, taking a lot of pride in what he alone may have regarded as a masterpiece.
