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Reviews Counted:45
Fresh:9
Rotten:36
Average Rating:3.9/10
Consensus: Despite Jared Leto's committed performance, Chapter 27 fails to penetrate to mind of Mark David Chapman, John Lennon’s killer.
Despite the subject, the script is flat. Despite using the real locations, the production looked cheesy. Finally, the decision to strip Mark David Chapman (John Lennon's killer) of any humanity makes the narrative decidedly one note.
[Leto's] mumbled voiceover may perfectly reflect Chapman's inner world. [But] who wants to enter that world? Neither Chapman ... nor his inner life is very interesting ... I was looking at my watch before the first third of the movie had passed.
In fact, the real problems with Chapter 27 is it vagueness. Everyone here - Leto, Lohan, Friedlander - leaves us in the lurch, and nothing Schaefer does can save our confusion.
Imagine hanging out in the head of a psychotic, indefensible loser for 80 minutes and getting nothing worth remembering or admiring in return.
"I hate the movies. They're phony, so goddamned phony." Poor Mark David Chapman: no matter how many times he rejects the world of celebrity and phoniness, he's dragged back inside.
However much objectivity the filmmakers try to bring to it, there is an inescapable element of glorification of thoroughly reprehensible characters.
In order to play John Lennon's assassin Mark David Chapman, actor Jared Leto gained some 70 pounds. Seemingly following his lead, the pic itself is heavy, lethargic, and exasperating.
Top CriticThis misbegotten psychological portrait eagerly foregrounds Leto's excess blubber and histrionic blather, delivered like bad improv outside the Dakota building.
Worth seeing for Leto's performance ... but its slow, meandering pace tends to be its undoing.
A failed attempt to probe dramatically the inner workings of the troubled mind of John Lennon's assassin in a chronicle replete with shallow Freudian observations about delusion and paranoia.
The film manages to be entirely about Mark David Chapman without saying a single insightful thing about him.
Will likely make its own mark on history as the single most relentlessly self-conscious vanity project to ever be conceived.
Visually ugly, morally non-existent and a complete black hole in the departments of insight and wit, Chapter 27 is quite possibly the most godawful, irredeemable film to yet emerge in the 21st century.
It's a train-wreck turn in a dreary movie about a self-pitying loser responsible for murdering a beloved pop icon.
his drama, about the three days leading up to the murder, never overcomes its inherent ghoulishness, largely because Chapman, like so many mentally ill people, is a huge bore.
That anyone would allow this new guy into their lives is a complete stretch.
Chapter 27 just makes you feel bad for, and about, everybody -- including the wretched souls who made the thing.
Top CriticStop the madness and please avoid this film at all costs.
...ostensibly about the last few days in Chapman's life, but it's really about how much Leto's belly bulges over his waistband.
Despite all his obvious effort and admirable Stanislavskian immersion, his Chapman is pure cinematic affectation, a compendium of great movie madmen of the past.
March 25, 2008:
Trailer & Poster review 
More...
January 26, 2007:
Sundance Review: "Starting Out in the Evening" Is Funny; "Chapter 27" Needs to Lose Weight; "Once" Has Charms
Senh caught the screenings of three films making their stop at the Sundance Film Festival this week: a funny and well-acted drama about relationships and the creative process; a... More...
| Tomatometer Percentage | Movie | Date |
|---|---|---|
| 100% | The Red Shoes | 11/12 |
| 88% | Unmade Beds | 11/12 |
| 71% | Where the Wild Things Are | 11/12 |
| 67% | Carriers | 11/12 |
| 40% | The Limits of Control | 11/12 |
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