The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976)

Cosmo owns a strip club, but he also gambles above and beyond what he can pay. He gets in deep with ...Cosmo owns a strip club, but he also gambles above and beyond what he can pay. He gets in deep with the mob, and to pay off the debt they compel him to kill a Chinese bookie. But they don't tell him everything...

John Cassavetes perhaps is the most well-known and regarded independent filmmaker in American film history. This film was shot in 1976 at the peak of his career, and although it is not his best film, it reflects many of the unique traits that made his films distinctive: a street level realism in camera work and sets and locations and dialogue, a languid pace designed to explore character, and interesting characters that are all too human.

About John Cassavetes from all movie .com:

Perhaps better known to the general public as an actor, John Cassavetes' true artistic legacy derives from his work behind the camera; arguably, he was America's first truly independent filmmaker, an iconoclastic maverick whose movies challenged the assumptions of the cinematic form. Obsessed with bringing to the screen the "small feelings" he believed that American society at large attempted to suppress, Cassavetes' work emphasized his actors above all else, favoring character examination over traditional narrative storytelling to explore the realities of the human condition. A pioneer of self-financing and self-distribution, he led the way for filmmakers to break free of Hollywood control, perfecting an improvisational, cinéma vérité aesthetic all his own.

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