The Killing of a Chinese Bookie

Name: The Killing of a Chinese Bookie
Genre: Drama, Thriller, Crime
Released: February 15, 1976
Duration: 135 min
Rating: 65
Cast: Al Ruban, Azizi Johari, Ben Gazzara, John Kullers, Meade Roberts

1976

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Generally favorable reviews based on 13 Critics

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Movie Details & Credits

Faces Distribution | Release Date: February 15, 1976

Starring: Al Ruban, Azizi Johari, Ben Gazzara, John Kullers, Meade Roberts, Morgan Woodward, Robert Phillips, Seymour Cassel, Timothy Carey, Virginia Carrington

Summary: A proud strip club owner is forced to come to terms with himself as a man, when his gambling addiction gets him in hot water with the mob, who offer him only one alternative.

Director: John Cassavetes

Genre(s): Drama, Thriller, Crime

Rating: R

Runtime: 135 min

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Critic Reviews

100

Entertainment Weekly - Chris Nashawaty

Gazzara struts like a polyester peacock, playing a doomed nightclub owner in debt to the wrong people. Read full review

Empire - William Thomas

With a heavily improvised script Cassavetes gets the most from his actors, each giving emotive performances. Read full review

Chicago Reader - Jonathan Rosenbaum

Peter Bogdanovich used Gazzara in a similar part in Saint Jack (1979), but as good as that film is, it doesn't catch the exquisite warmth and delicacy of feeling of Cassavetes's doom-ridden comedy-drama. Read full review

Newsweek - Jack Kroll

The jaggedness will put many people off, which is a shame, because this is a rewarding film that asks only that you stay alert and use your senses. [15 Mar 1976, p.89]

Time - Jay Cocks

As always, the acting is superlative. Gazzara's Cosmo catches all the paradoxes and puzzles of the character, the wired ambition and the rapture over doom. Read full review

Time Out - Staff (Not Credited)

Like a shaggy dog story operating inside a chase movie. Chinese Bookie is the more insouciant, involuted and unfathomable of the two; the curdled charm of Gazzara's lopsided grin has never been more to the point. Read full review

TV Guide Magazine - Staff (Not Credited)

Cassavetes' films can be annoying and enigmatic, but they are usually creative and interesting. Not so with this one. Read full review

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