The Killing Of A Chinese Bookie may very well be the best film of John Cassavetes.
I nail its greatness: 'The Killing Of A Chinese Bookie succeeds as a great piece of cinema because its lead character is one of the most realistically drawn characters in film history- he’s a thug and a killer, yet one who is explicable. He is a businessman who cannot separate work from personal lives- his girlfriend is the bar’s top stripper, and twenty or more years his junior. Yet, it is not a film noir, as so often called, for Cassavetes transcends the simpleminded techniques of that genre, and delivers a film of intellectual heft and psychological breadth, where murder blossoms from the seemingly most inane, perfunctory, and inconsequential of moments, and leads to an examination of masculinity and territoriality that has no peers in film. Sometimes his scenes go on a tad too long, but, like Walt Whitman’s poetry, there is beauty and strength in even his excesses- something that many other so-called artists’ most focused works lack. Cassavetes consistently served up his art at ‘the grown ups table,’ as Woody Allen called drama vis-à-vis comedy, but so few film fans are used to real, or pure, drama, for Hollywood has so dissolved their minds with mid-level melodramas, that they simply are overwhelmed by his best films audacious pseudo-verité.'
Ben Gazzara is great, and gives one of the most realistic mobster performances in history. This, and Jim Jarmusch's Ghost Dog, are the best mobster portrayals I've ever seen. Best and most realistic- none of the stretching of truths in Scorsese nor any of the faux Shakespeareanism of Coppola.
Here's a taste that shows the realism I mean:
THIS- not gunfights and great decisons- is what dominates criminal enterprises. Just listen to the agita-inducing BS that Gazzara's Cosmo Vitelli must deal with. And this is a slice of hundreds of little bullshits in a day. Note how people go about in their own little worlds, ignoring each other. No filmmaker does this the way Cassavetes did.
Beautiful. GREAT!
