116. The Killing Of A Chinese Bookie (1976)

Starring: Ben Gazzara, Timothy Carey, Seymour Cassel

Director: John Cassavetes

Running Time: 135 mins

The Killing Of A Chinese Bookie is an American film about a strip club owner who, as a payment for his debts to the local mob, is told to kill a bookmaker for the mob’s own gain.

This was just a really dull film. It was promised to be an exciting movie about gangsters, but in reality, it was very boring, and the story was just not intriguing enough in my opinion.

As an indication to just how boring this film was, and how easily my attention was able to drift from the story, I spent the entire duration thinking about other random things. For example, I think I spent the first 30 minutes thinking about Ben Gazzara: “Why is Bob Hoskins doing an American accent?”, because, of course, he comes from Suffolk.

Also, I went to see this film in a small cinema in Southern France as a “version originale”, and there were French subtitles being displayed on the screen, so I was actually more interested in learning some extra French for my exam next month, such as the colloquial term for “cash”, which is “le fric”…

Overall, this gets 4.4 because it was not at all interesting or exciting, at all like a gangster film, as the story was very disjointed, and it was too long!