Charting Chapman’s relationship with The Catcher in the Rye to being quizzed after the murder, this is an engrossing study – but paper thin.
Comment
12/07/07
The Killing of John Lennon (2008)
35 %
Reviews Counted: 31 Fresh: 11 Rotten:20 Average Rating: 4.8/10
Consensus:
Despite a committed performance by newcomer Jonas Ball, The Killing of John Lennon is ultimately a flimsy character study.
Rated: 15
Runtime: 1 hr 55 mins
Theatrical Release: 07-12-2007
Synopsis: Writer-director Andrew Piddington (SHUTTLECOCK, THE FALL) delves deep into the mind of Mark David Chapman in THE KILLING OF JOHN LENNON. Jonas Ball makes his feature-film debut as Chapman, the crazed gunman who shot John Lennon on December 8, 1980. Basing his script on Chapman's own words... [More]
Genre: Dramas
Starring: Jonas Ball, Krishna Fairchild, Gunter Stern, Gail Kay Bell, Mie Omori
Director: Andrew Piddington
Screenwriter: Andrew Piddington
Producer: Rakha Singh
Composer: Martin Kiszko
Screenwriter: Andrew Piddington
Producer: Rakha Singh
Composer: Martin Kiszko
Reviews
This tells us precisely nothing about John Lennon and a sight too much about his killer, Mark Chapman.
12/07/07
They ought to send the whole of The Killing of John Lennon up in flames.
12/07/07
Chapman is allowed to shove his face into the camera once too often, and it feels as if his illness is being paraded for our fascination.
12/07/07
Top Critic
It features actor Jonas Ball looking more or less like the famed police mugshot, lumbering about with Chapman's own interminable (but avowedly authentic) prison-diary ramblings recited in voiceover.
12/07/07
Top Critic
The power of the film is the way it charts, indeed enacts, a man losing his grip on reality. 4/5
12/07/07
Top Critic
The makers of this tasteless and generally bleak recreation of Chapman’s life in the three months before the killing just didn’t get it. The man who shot the ex-Beatle deserves to rot unforgotten in his six by ten, not have films made about him.
12/07/07
There's a feeling of eerie otherworldliness and the murder itself is relished in detail, however the film does lack overall impact
12/07/07
Top Critic
You leave the cinema not just saddened anew that such an iconic artist was so pointlessly killed, but amazed that it doesn’t happen more often.
12/07/07
Chapman was on a simple, skewed quest for infamy. And he got it. One gathers he’d be chuffed to see this film. And that’s the biggest issue of all.
12/07/07
Top Critic
Unlike shabby exploitation docu-dramas such as Bundy, this is an honest meditation on the warped assassin and his motives and assumes the tension of a thriller as the appointed time approaches.
12/07/07
Top Critic
Tense until the murder, but Piddington assumes we all care as much about Chapman as he does.
12/07/07
Piddington has pulled off a delicate balancing act, presenting Chapman as an explosive by-product of our celebrity-obsessed times, while resisting the temptation to validate Chapman's own elaborate self-mythologising.
11/30/07
Top Critic
As the narrative lugubriously sticks to the documented events, we are served nothing more than a filmed transcript.
06/21/08
It's well-constructed and acted, but mainly just left me feeling like I needed a shower after an exercise in voyeurism surrounding an event that's still hard to watch.
03/21/08
Top Critic
Fastidiously researched, dubiously suspenseful character portrait is unable to salvage a lick of hindsight from the tragedy beyond "murderous narcissists are people too."
02/15/08
Despite its vivid and imaginative style, The Killing of John Lennon is tough slogging for its nearly two-hour running time.
01/07/08
Even if you can forgive [director] Piddington's mangling of the basics, you will find it hard to overlook his frantic use of slo-mo, a wobbly camera, freeze frames, double exposures and a close-up of a single eye.
01/04/08
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