The Killing of John Lennon (2007)
The film follows the travels and accounts of Mark Chapman (Jonas Ball) and gives the watcher an insight into his mind. It starts with him in Hawaii and how he does not fit in with anyone including his job; family; friends etc. He says he is searching for a purpose in his life and that it has no direction. He seeks refuge in the public library where he finds the book, 'The Catcher in the Rye'. He becomes obsessed with the book and believes that he himself is the protaganist in the book, Holden Caulfield. He believes the ideas in the book reflect his own personal life and how he does not fit in anywhere and he reads it constantly. He then finds another book in the library about The Beatles singer John Lennon and begins a personal hatred for him.
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So much average
Good concept, poorly executed.
It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...
what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.
Though I checked the "spoiler" option just to be safe, there is no real way to offer spoilers on a film that cribs so slavishly from public documents taken from a particularly tragic episode in America's ongoing love affair with fame-obsessed wackos.This morally repugnant film would possibly (but not likely) have something going for it if it offered even a scintilla of a reason for being, but it has none. It is merely the recounting of the tragic and unnecessary murder of a public figure from the perspective of the deluded narcissist who killed him.Try to imagine someone making a film of Michael Jackson's death and the resounding question would be "why?" The same applies here. This film offers nothing that you couldn't get from a Wikipedia accounting of the crime, so what purpose does it serve? There is no "understanding" to gained from just listening to the criminally insane justify their insanity. It only makes for a VERY tedious two hours that borders on the insufferable when the ramblings of this mental midget are inflated to major motion picture proportions. This film left me feeling disgusted with the filmmakers. I've seen porn that had more dignity.
'The Killing of John Lennon' is a pretentious, unoriginal and pompous movie that is not even worth to be compared to other movies based on the same theme, such as 'Taxi Driver' or 'The Assassination of Richard Nixon'.The worst part being probably the three or four uncredited quotations to Taxi Driver, it is pure and simple PLAGIARISM. If Chapman was actually inspired by Travis Bickle (the villain of Taxi Driver), then it would have been at least decent to show it in the movie. Besides, several scenes of this film are also largely inspired by Taxi Driver and Scorsese's camera-work in generalI gave 3 out of 10 because I reckon some technical skills (although it's largely overdone in my opinion, there is way too much editing in this movie).
Did John Lennon's alleged hypocrisy ended up getting him killed? That is one of the gunning themes that are brought to the line of cinematic fire in the well-executed "The Killing of John Lennon". The film focuses on the deranged adult life of Lennon assassin Mark David Chapman and his daily fixation with the literary work "The Catcher in The Rye". It starts from his young adult days residing in Hawaii and reaches to Chapman's deadly journey to Lennon's home in Manhattan. Writer-Director Andrew Piddington does a credible job in depicting Chapman's plodding disintegration to maniacal madness. However, he was a tad of a nowhere man with his underdeveloped, sluggish script. Imagine unknown Jonas Ball stealing the show as the deranged Chapman. I am sure it was a hard day's night for Jonas evolving into that character. Ball had to have balls to do it. It is one of the best acting performances of the year by an actor with a testicular last name. Piddington wisely also incorporates the theme of the hunger for social acceptability and popularity within Chapman's deviousness, and how man could be catapulted into literary theory obsessively in low self-esteem states. I do not think many Beatles fans will be twisting and shouting jubilantly with a viewing of "The Killing of John Lennon" but they should see it more as an objective narrative than a helter skelter fable. **** Good
I watched this film on pay per view mainly because I remember that day so well. It's hard for me to say exactly why, but I don't think the film quite works. Somehow the character development didn't click for me. The film was a bit slow moving, and I didn't like the occasional surrealistic asides showing him freaking out, descending into madness.Technically, there were many flaws. They didn't try very hard to get the period right, other than obvious things like his haircut, car, and the 1980 presidential campaign. Also, I recall reading that part of Chapman's motive was that he was a rigid Christian, and he still smarted from Lennon's offending of the faith way back in the 60s. I think he had been some sort of youth counselor as well.Overall, there was too much of an amateurishness to the production for me to recommend.