The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976)
Directed by John Cassavetes
Cosmo Vittelli, the proprietor of a sleazy, low-rent Hollywood cabaret, has a real affection for the women who strip in his peepshows and the staff who keep up his dingy establishment. He also has a major gambling problem that has gotten him in trouble before. When Cosmo loses big-time at an underground casino run by mobster Mort, he isn't able to pay up. Mort then offers Cosmo the chance to pay back his debt by knocking off a pesky, Mafia-protected bookie.
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What critics compared The Killing of a Chinese Bookie to
In Howard’s doomed figure is something of Ben Gazzara’s character from The Killing of a Chinese Bookie , a social climber who keeps slipping on the bottom rungs and whose individual tragedy illuminates the emptiness of the systems that define him.
It all plays out like a hyperactive cross between a hard-boiled John Cassavetes melodrama like Gloria or The Killing of a Chinese Bookie and a character-driven Sidney Lumet thriller like Q&A or Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead .