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Reviews Counted:32
Fresh:12
Rotten:20
Average Rating:4.9/10
Consensus: Despite a committed performance by newcomer Jonas Ball, The Killing of John Lennon is ultimately a flimsy character study.
Theatrical Release:Jan 2, 2008 Limited
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... [More]
Starring: Jonas Ball, Krishna Fairchild, Gunter Stern, Gail Kay Bell
Director: Andrew Piddington
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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.
A transfixing recreation of the events that shocked the world.
A well-researched docudrama on the twisted mind of the 25-year-old Mark David Chapman, the nobody who killed John Lennon.
Unlike Chapman, The Killing of John Lennon is no phony.
A stunning performance by newcomer Jonas Ball in the role of Mark David Chapman, the killer of John Lennon.
Piddington does a beautiful balancing act, creating a movie that works both on the level of suspense and as a detailed factual chronicle.
Top CriticThe power of the film is the way it charts, indeed enacts, a man losing his grip on reality. 4/5
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.
A pertinent exploration of the relationship between celebrities and their fans in a fame-obsessed world.
There's a feeling of eerie otherworldliness and the murder itself is relished in detail, however the film does lack overall impact
Andrew Piddington's devastating re-enactment of events leading up to, including and immediately after the murder is taken from interviews, depositions and court transcripts.
Top CriticUnlike 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.
Charting Chapman’s relationship with The Catcher in the Rye to being quizzed after the murder, this is an engrossing study – but paper thin.
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.
Who is the audience here, besides depraved Beatles completists?
Fastidiously researched, dubiously suspenseful character portrait is unable to salvage a lick of hindsight from the tragedy beyond "murderous narcissists are people too."
This tells us precisely nothing about John Lennon and a sight too much about his killer, Mark Chapman.
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.
Piddington never dares to diagnose Chapman's rage, settling for Wikipedia-style objectivity dressed in the more fatuous-than-provocative manner of Robinson Devor's Zoo.
Only slightly better than Chapter 27, it's questionable whether even the most morbidly curious John Lennon fan might have any interest in sitting through nearly two hours of this creepy lunatic.
January 03, 2008:
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