Despite all his obvious effort and admirable Stanislavskian immersion, his Chapman is pure cinematic affectation, a compendium of great movie madmen of the past.
Comment
10/18/08
Chapter 27 (2008)
20
%
Tomatometer
How does the Tomatometer work 
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.
Reviews for Chapter 27
It might even be bad enough to inspire Catcher author J.D. Salinger to break his decades of public silence to speak out against this high-camp fiasco.
03/27/08
If there is any good reason for an audience to spend an hour and a half wallowing in the psychotic reveries of this wayward young man, the filmmakers and their star have sadly failed to provide it.
03/28/08
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.
04/25/08
Chapter 27 just makes you feel bad for, and about, everybody -- including the wretched souls who made the thing.
04/25/08
Top CriticBy the end of this modest, strange venture, Leto made me believe it was worth being forced to hang out on the sidewalk with this man, if only to get a creeping sense of what that might've been like.
04/24/08
Feels like thirty pages of script in a 90-minute frame.
01/28/07
Worth seeing for Leto's performance ... but its slow, meandering pace tends to be its undoing.
01/24/07
This is a very tough film to watch, especially for Beatles fans that worshipped Lennon, but it does provide a thought-provoking take on the inner workings of Mark David Chapman’s twisted mind.
03/31/08
Will likely make its own mark on history as the single most relentlessly self-conscious vanity project to ever be conceived.
02/07/07
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.
03/23/08
Chapter 27 is far from flawless, but Leto disappears inside this angry, mouth-breathing psycho geek with a conviction that had me hanging on his every delusion.
04/09/08
The film manages to be entirely about Mark David Chapman without saying a single insightful thing about him.
04/14/08
However much objectivity the filmmakers try to bring to it, there is an inescapable element of glorification of thoroughly reprehensible characters.
03/28/08
That anyone would allow this new guy into their lives is a complete stretch.
02/03/07
Leto's performance is as great a physical, if not emotional, transformation as Charlize Theron's "hagging it up" for Monster.
03/25/08
Chapter 27 is a smart attempt to distill the twisted psychology and motivation of Mark David Chapman, which we've all superficially gleaned through mass-media reports and intermittent updates on Chapman's incarceration.
01/30/07
Top CriticDespite 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.
04/21/08
Stop the madness and please avoid this film at all costs.
04/18/08
[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.
04/03/08
Latest News for Chapter 27
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...
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