763.<br /><br />And the question is: How many times do we get to see a close-up of Ben Gazzara rubbing his hand over his face while failing to convey ANY emotion in John Cassavetes' "The Killing Of A Chinese Bookie"? I suppose film fans have to be admired for their open-minded attitudes... no matter how terrible a film is some group of moviegoers somewhere will declare it "brilliant," maybe even "genius." In fact, some movies get more critical acclaim the more awful they are: if I filmed a brick wall for two solid hours and added a soundtrack of moose humping I just might earn an Oscar nom. And I'd be guaranteed to have a film better than this one.<br /><br />"The Killing of a Chinese Bookie" is- for lack of a better description- a character-driven crime film. It is also an endurance test: scenes are stretched to mind-numbing length, sloppy, improvised dialogue flies by and crashes to the floor, and the bulk of the film is devoted to watching the pathetically unrealistic floor show at a strip-club/cabaret owned by Gazzara's "Cosmo" character.<br /><br />First of all, are we really supposed to believe that anyone would pay to see such a morbid and depressing show? Men go to strip clubs to see breast, cheek and lipp, to throw singles and get drunk and bust a nut in the champagne room. Here Cassavetes wants us to believe that the girls dance in poorly-choreographed theme numbers while a fat, flamboyant MC sings torch songs in front of kindergarten-quality cardboard props. And every now and again one of the girls pops a nipple. The idea of this passing for adult entertainment is as absurd today as it was in 1976; this is a director indulging in pointlessly-maudlin over-dramatics. Sadly these sequences are ten times better than the rest of the film.<br /><br />Gazzara incurs gambling debts with some local mobsters, and luckily for us the director included every frame of this action-free sequence! The movie is padded out with silences, lingering takes, fatal closeups and characters groaning for no particular reason. I get what Cassavetes was going for here, I do, but he does it to such a cloying extreme that I ended up going numb within the first fifteen minutes. A slowly-paced film that gives actors time to emote and breathe on screen can be wonderful... but there's so little going on in terms of character and story that it becomes a stunt, and a grating one at that.<br /><br />The mob strong-arms Cosmo into killing a Chinese bookie in order to pay off his gambling debt, and the sequence is so anti-climactic that it's almost laughable. He walks in to the Chinaman's house- supposedly a heavily-guarded fortress- with about as much difficulty as walking into a Taco Bell. His escape involves a light jog and a bus ride (you heard me) and then he's back at his club to watch the girls do their show, blissfully unaware that the mob now intends to kill him to cover up their tracks.<br /><br />And so we move into the best sequence of the film: the scenes with Timothy Carey. Carey was a character actor- truly insane- with roles in "Paths of Glory," "The Killing," and "The World's Greatest Sinner." Its only when he's on screen that the film is alive and gains some sense of purpose... even with an underdeveloped character and questionable directing Carey manages to create a lasting impression. It's too bad he vanishes on a whim that plays like a bad plot device, leaving us to another hour of nothingness.<br /><br />Oh, Cosmo was evidently shot in the belly while offing the Coolie, a scene the director just didn't feel like filming! Now he's walking around with what is in reality one of the most bloody, painful wounds to the human body- but somehow Cosmo holds in all the blood and feels none of the pain! (I love your brave quest for Absolute Reality, Mr. Cassavetes...) The magic bullet wound simply disappears while Cosmo visits his girlfriends, evades two mafia gunmen, gives a motivational speech to his employees and performs a one-man monologue on the cabaret stage... HOORAY! Being shot in the gut was never this much fun!<br /><br />Or boring. Even this implausible sequence is filmed in COMA-VISION, and you'll be praying for a bullet to your own abdomen just to make the hurting stop. Look, I could go on like this. The movie is a pretentious waste of time... Cassavetes drowns a potentially dynamic crime script with endlessly hollow filler. If you think you can make it, I wish you luck, but as a guy genuinely trying to save you time I urge you to move on.<br /><br />We start shooting the brick wall pic on Monday! <br /><br />GRADE: D