SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

Highly Overrated But Still Good

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

The Killing of John Lennon is a non-fiction drama about Mark Chapman's plot to kill musician John Lennon.It stars Jonas Ball, Robert C. Kirk and Thomas A. McMahon.It was written and directed by Andrew Piddington. The filmmaker explores these questions in this fact-based drama which examines several weeks in the life of Mark David Chapman, the man who murdered John Lennon. Chapman is a self-obsessed young man who has an emotionally distant relationship with his parents and a failing marriage to Gloria. Unable to hold down a job, he spends a lot of time at the public library, where he rereads J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye and browses though a photo book on John Lennon, and the two begin to fuse in his imagination, as he links Holden Caulfield's grousing about "phonies" with the fame and wealth of one-time activist Lennon. He hops a flight to New York City and visits the sights Caulfield talked about in the novel when not busy standing vigil outside the Dakota, the luxury apartment building Lennon calls home, with a gun in his possession. The first time Chapman crosses paths with Lennon as he's leaving the Dakota, he asks the former Beatle to sign a copy of Double Fantasy, Lennon's new album; several hours later, Lennon returns home and he approaches him with a very different intent.The film is ultimately a flimsy character study despite that fact that all of Chapman's dialogue in the film was taken from his diaries or interviews he's given since his arrest and imprisonment as well as being a well-researched docudrama on the twisted mind of the 25-year-old killer.Jonas Ball's performance is commendable.

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.

Killing of John Lennon, The (2006) ** 1/2 (out of 4) The first of two films looking at the murder of John Lennon in the past couple of years. This one here tells the story of Mark Chapman (Jonas Ball) starting three months before the murder and a year afterwards. This here is certainly a little better than Chapter 27 but both movies have major problems, which in the end means that neither are worthy of the subject matter. On a technical level this one here is pretty strong with its nice direction and performances but I think it's tries to do too much. The movie covers a pretty long period but it kept hitting me as a been there done that feeling. We've seen countless movies trying to get inside the head of a crazy person and this is where the movie fails. I never did feel as if we were inside Chapman's mind no matter what crazy sayings were coming out of his mouth or how many times he read from The Catcher in the Rye. This here makes the first thirty-minutes really drag as we are seeing Chapman in Hawaii as he slowly comes to realize that it's his destiny to kill the ex-Beatle. When things get to New York the movie picks up a bit but we still have to listen to Chapman talk, talk and talk. The most interesting part of the story being told happens after the 77-minute mark when Lennon is killed. Unlike other films, we get some rather graphic details of the murder with all five bullets shattering through Lennon. I'm sure some fans might find it hard to watch these moments but we also continue with what Chapman did after the murder. Everything involving what happened minutes and hours after his arrest are very well done and are quite interesting but soon we get more dragged out scenes of talk. I'm positive there's a very good movie to be told here but perhaps someone should look at the murder away from Chapman's eyes. Ball delivers a fine performance as Chapman and others in the cast fit their roles just fine. In the end there's a lot of interesting footage here and it's very well made but there's also a lot of weak stuff that really kills it.

I saw "The Killing of John Lennon" at the Tribeca Film Festival. I thought this movie would provide interesting insight into why Mark David Chapman killed John Lennon, but I felt like it missed the mark (no pun intended).First of all, at 2 hours, this movie is about 45 minutes too long. There are long, drawn-out dreamlike sequences that were unnecessary - it would have far more interesting to learn about his relationship to his wife and to also include information such as the imaginary people Chapman heard and took guidance from.The film fails to capture the zeitgeist of the day - there are many instances where we see modern cars and signs (such as the logo for Planet Hollywood and current Broadway shows when the cab is driving through Times Square) and a general lack of it feeling like 1980. Chapman was among the first of the celebrity stalkers, and a feeling of this relative innocence of the day is lacking. (For example, Chapman frequently asks the doorman if he's seen Lennon that day. Nowadays, the cops would be called. Back then, he was probably just seen as a rapid fan.) The film is presented mostly in monologue. I'm sure this was a decision to give the feeling that Chapman lived in his own world, but it ends up leaving the viewer feeling like they've missed something.I saw people checking their watches about an hour in the movie. I knew it was two hours long and really wanted to leave about halfway through.A documentary about Chapman would probably be an intriguing movie, but this movie is lacking in many elements.