The Killing of a Chinese Bookie

In his perverse reluctance to play the game of Hollywood genre, Cassavetes takes on his first film noir as if an intricate domestic drama. No short of shootout, chases, murder, double crosses and topless dances, yet it’s more like a shaggy dog story, detailing how a strip club owner desperately committed to maintaining a façade of suave gentility even when he runs afoul of loan sharks, and is forced to pay off the debt by executing a bookie. What makes the tragicomic character of the proud impresario – and his grotesque doppelganger Mr. Sophistication – so moving is its alter-ego relation to the filmmaker, all revelling in a gambler’s fatalistic joy and romantic solitude.