It's another strange John Cassavetes film.
This one might just take the cake for being the most ''movie'' of Cassavetes movies.
There are certain cinematic shots and sound cues that feel more at home in a medium to big budget Studio film. And their present here mainly with scenes involving monsters, shooting and a strange escaping scene involving multiple taxis at a bus.
So there's this guy who runs a low-grade strip club with these horrible dancing numbers and awful acting routines. He acts like a big shot despite being somebody of relatively low class.
For some reason he decides to gamble a crap ton of money at a less-than-reputable casino joint. Now a group of mobsters want their money from him and he can't repay. So they decided to set him up to kill this random Chinese bookie as a form of repayment.
Miraculously he succeeds at actually killing this guy and manages to escape. Now the mafia wants to kill him to tie up any loose ends. But somehow he's able to survive the mafias insult and goes back to directing his incredibly low-grade strip club.
And much like the novel Don Quixote a general summary just doesn't do it justice. All the crucial points of this movie come in the incredibly tiny details, usually resulting from especially minuscule conversations or strange one off events.
It's considered by some to be John's most polarising film. It has some of the most uninteresting scenes ever portrayed in a film. And the acting from some of these people is just horrible.
There's a weird thing with John cassavetes Fans. It seems the weirdre (he's Films get) the more people tend to defend them.
Stating that it's all part of an image or an idea for that it's meant to be that way, to try or portray some message. Maybe it's just supposed to be abstract and weird.
To a certain extent I'm one of these people.
I'll defend 'Mikey and Nicky*' Husbands or Shadows any day of the week. I love these weird strange awkward movies. I love how they try to be whatever it is that they want to be, without catering to some horrible Studio system or the popular opinion of the masses.
Sometimes a strange thing in the movie is just bad. And besides having some questionable decisions this film has some weird editing.
There's a scene later on where Ben Gazzara character Cosmo is in a gunfight with this one mobster and it gets to the end where the guy is chasing Cosmo down.
But then we immediately cut to the next scene without seeing the final confrontation. Cosmo is safe, he stumbled back home and the other guy and the rest of the mafia are never seen again. I don't care how many excuses you want to make for art. This scene was badly edited and was ultimately confusing.
I'm honestly conflicted with this film. I think you could have removed the entire Mafia / Chinese bookie from the movie and you would have ended up with a better film.
I think the movie would have benefited from just being a simple story about a strange man Running a C-grade stripper joint.
The mafia subplot along with the Chinese bookie just feels like needless filler.
Ben Gazzara deserves a ton of credit for this film. Almost all of the movie survives on his performance and his General character and demeanour is so awkward and yet relatable that I can't help but be fascinated by the guy.
I couldn't possibly pretend that this is a good movie and I wouldn't recommend it to most people. But if you're the kind of person that loves watching awkward people doing awkward things then there might be something here for you.
If there's a contemporary box out there filled with the familiar then this would be a mile away sitting inside an Rubik's Cube.
*Mikey and Nicky is a Elaine May film. But I throw her in the same category as John when it comes to weird Out of the Box films.
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