Metacritic reviews

Gazzara struts like a polyester peacock, playing a doomed nightclub owner in debt to the wrong people.

Peter Bogdanovich used Gazzara in a similar part in Saint Jack (1979), but as good as that film is, it doesn't catch the exquisite warmth and delicacy of feeling of Cassavetes's doom-ridden comedy-drama.

With a heavily improvised script Cassavetes gets the most from his actors, each giving emotive performances.

A film that displays most of the faults of his kind of on-the-hoof film-making - and all the virtues.

Gazzara is riveting as man who exudes cool and calm—style—while also stinking of panic.

As always, the acting is superlative. Gazzara's Cosmo catches all the paradoxes and puzzles of the character, the wired ambition and the rapture over doom.

Like a shaggy dog story operating inside a chase movie. Chinese Bookie is the more insouciant, involuted and unfathomable of the two; the curdled charm of Gazzara's lopsided grin has never been more to the point.

A meandering, almost impenetrable tale of sweaty strip joints and sleazy gangsters.

Watching the film is like listening to someone use a lot of impressive words, the meanings of which are just wrong enough to keep you in a state of total confusion, but occasionally right enough to hold your attention. What is he trying to say? It takes a little while to realize that maybe the speaker not only doesn't know but doesn't even care to think things out.

True to form, John Cassavetes challenges a Hollywood cliche: that technology is so advanced even the worst films usually look good. With ease, he proves that an awful film can look even worse.