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Powerful

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

Another reviewer mentions that anyone watching this film who doesn't care about John Lennon probably won't feel much. I personally couldn't care less about Lennon's music or his politics, and I couldn't stand the Beatles, but I like docu-dramas and true-crime so I gave it a try. I remember the actual incident and I was familiar with the details so I knew there would be no real surprises. I have a vivid memory of joining the world chorus of "oh no, John Lennon was murdered!" only because he died at the same time as my grandmother and I knew I was facing a three-hour drive to her funeral with nothing but Beatles songs coming out of the car radio. That was my idea of "hell on wheels".But I found I DID feel during this movie, much more than I had felt during the aftermath of the actual killing. The shooting scene is terribly graphic and really forced me to think about what happened… for God's sake, this was a guy just coming home from work, he's got a little kid waiting for him upstairs, and some nutball who wants to be notorious pulls out a gun and pumps four bullets into him right in front of his wife. Regardless of whether or not Lennon and his rather strange wife meant anything to you personally, you've got to feel revulsion and horror at what you see recreated in front of the Dakota. Chapman's "I want" mentality destroyed a young family that night. John Lennon or John Smith; doesn't matter. What a hideous act of selfishness and misplaced hatred. I hope the SOB never gets out of prison.It's unfortunate that the filmmakers pulled the viewers out of the past by including a taxi ride through Times Square, though. The billboard for "Mamma Mia" was clearly out of place and apparently there were several other modern-day touches that I missed but others have spotted.I still think the Beatles were a quartet of funny-looking, tone-deaf weirdos… I was born in 1962 so I missed the Beatlemania boat completely… but I DID feel something during this film.

I rented this film recently knowing very little about it other than it was some sort of character study of Chapman. Had I researched the film a little - particularly if I'd checked here at IMDb - I think I still would have hired it, since most of the responses are generally positive. I have no idea why.This film is nothing more than pretentious garbage. There is no reason I can justify for making it. Don't get me wrong, I think a film about Lennon's murder provides for some interesting analysis of John himself, Chapman and the culture they shared. "The Killing of John Lennon" offers none of this analysis, in fact it offers nothing at all aside from a few music video aesthetics. It's obvious here that director Andrew Piddington has very little interest in giving the audience any sort of theme or meaning. There is no insight whatsoever into Chapman, although we're apparently hearing direct quotes from him. Vacant stares at the camera, still frames and other techniques of the film school variety do not equate to anything other than a superficial experience.The performances reflect all other aspects of the production, very little preparation and effort is apparent with many scenes feeling like they were thought up on the spot. Jonas Ball occasionally slips into character, but more often than not I get the feeling I'm watching an actor pull out all of his "I'm crazy" tricks.Dripping with self importance, the film does not hold a candle to any of it's fictional man-going-insane-withdrawing-from-society counterparts. I suspect that a conversation with Mr Piddington would be much like this film; self congratulating, stylish but with very little substance.

In ways this felt closer to a dramatization then a film in the classic sense which I think was a great thing. It makes it feel as close to reality as a movie can be without being a documentary. Jonas Ball who plays Mark Chapman in this film is just amazing, I don't know exactly how close to reality he plays this character but honestly, so what, he is intense, interesting, unique and a force on screen. The film maker used transcripts from the trial and the diary of Chapman to create the dialogue in the film and that authenticates it enough for me, it opens a window into the mind of Chapman that most people would never know. I think the film did a great job, no an amazing job of making everything feel real, like cameras were catching this all as it unfolded. Even with the outcome already known to the audience the anticipation and intensity was at times at a very high level. I was glad the film did not stop earlier but instead went on past the killing into what I feel is the best moments of the film when you see the immediate transformation of Chapman and then slowly his return to insanity. This film proves that a single actors performance can truly make a film. My hats off to this director for recreating such a horrible event with what feels like such authenticity.

"I hate the movies. They're phony, so goddamn phony," says Mark David Chapman in Chapter 27. Other than The Wizard of Oz, Chapman isn't much of a film fan. The Mark David Chapman (Jonas Ball) in The Killing of John Lennon would probably disagree. Despite the opening credit in Andrew Piddington's film that "All of Chapman's Words are His Own," his Chapman liberally quotes Taxi Driver and Apocalypse Now. Likewise, Piddington's direction liberally quotes Martin Scorsese, Francis Coppola, Oliver Stone, and Spike Lee.The Killing of John Lennon skips backwards and forwards in time quite a bit in the first two acts. The narrative begins in September, 1980 with Mark David Chapman in Hawaii. The audience sees glimpses of him working as a security guard, freaking out about his overbearing, oversexed mother (Krisha Fairchild), berating his soft spoken wife (Mie Omori), hassling scientologists, and pretending to be a sniper. Chapman must be making good money with his crappy job. While he drives a shitbox car, he can afford a gun and two trips from Hawaii to New York.The aborted first "mission" to execute John Lennon doesn't add much to the story but appears to be included for the sake of accuracy. Unfortunately, this care about details isn't consistent. Two of the more obvious gaffes have a September 1980 news broadcast mentions that the presidential election is "next Tuesday" (a few months early) and a convicted Chapman is sent to Riker's Island instead of Attica.The pacing of Piddington's film is clunky. Once Lennon has been shot—far more graphically than in Chapter 27 which keeps the camera on Chapman throughout the killing—The Killing of John Lennon runs out of steam but remains on screen for another 40 minutes! This final act ambles aimlessly through police interviews, psychiatric interviews, and scenes of Chapman in prison where his narration grow tiresome.The Chapman of The Killing of John Lennon sees himself as an agent of change. He's ending the '60s with a .38 and helping to usher in a new era lead by Ronald Reagan. Election posters line the entrance of the library where Chapman rediscovers The Catcher in the Rye and a Reagan stump speech plays over the opening of the film. With a Chapman more indebted to Travis Bickle than Holden Caufield, the brief inclusion of John Hinkley Jr's assassination attempt of Reagan could have been interesting. Hinkley was another proponent of The Catcher in the Rye and swore allegiance to Jodie Foster after repeated viewings of Taxi Driver. With a dearth of material to keep viewers engaged, perhaps Piddington should have considered exploring the Hinkley parallels further.If you can imagine Fred Rogers ("Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood") impersonating Travis Bickle, you have a close approximation of Jonas Ball's performance as Mark David Chapman. Though his "accent" is mentioned, there's little trace of Chapman's Southern roots present in Ball's vocalization. The actor is also lacking the girth, Jim Jones glasses, and unassuming politeness of the killer. This Chapman looks more like Jim Morrison gone to seed. Leto's Chapman soars to heights and sinks to lows swiftly, often sounding like a petulant child. Ball is very even in his delivery, giving his Chapman much more of a sinister air.The Killing of John Lennon utilizes the multi-format approach popularized by Oliver Stone's JFK and Natural Born Killers. Piddington merely seems to be following Stone's example, adding nothing of his own. Things go from bad to worse in the third act which not only meanders in tone but appears to have been made as a student film and tacked on as an afterthought. The interview of Chapman by a Bellvue psychiatrist looks as if it were shot while the cameraman was asleep. Though, at nearly two hours (and half that filler), sleep is the most natural response to this sloppy film