The Killing of John Lennon (2007)

Another reviewer mentions that anyone watching this film who doesn't care about John Lennon probably won't feel much. I personally couldn't care less about Lennon's music or his politics, and I couldn't stand the Beatles, but I like docu-dramas and true-crime so I gave it a try. I remember the actual incident and I was familiar with the details so I knew there would be no real surprises. I have a vivid memory of joining the world chorus of "oh no, John Lennon was murdered!" only because he died at the same time as my grandmother and I knew I was facing a three-hour drive to her funeral with nothing but Beatles songs coming out of the car radio. That was my idea of "hell on wheels".But I found I DID feel during this movie, much more than I had felt during the aftermath of the actual killing. The shooting scene is terribly graphic and really forced me to think about what happened… for God's sake, this was a guy just coming home from work, he's got a little kid waiting for him upstairs, and some nutball who wants to be notorious pulls out a gun and pumps four bullets into him right in front of his wife. Regardless of whether or not Lennon and his rather strange wife meant anything to you personally, you've got to feel revulsion and horror at what you see recreated in front of the Dakota. Chapman's "I want" mentality destroyed a young family that night. John Lennon or John Smith; doesn't matter. What a hideous act of selfishness and misplaced hatred. I hope the SOB never gets out of prison.It's unfortunate that the filmmakers pulled the viewers out of the past by including a taxi ride through Times Square, though. The billboard for "Mamma Mia" was clearly out of place and apparently there were several other modern-day touches that I missed but others have spotted.I still think the Beatles were a quartet of funny-looking, tone-deaf weirdos… I was born in 1962 so I missed the Beatlemania boat completely… but I DID feel something during this film.

Take one light-hearted, happy-souled, dreamer who wanted to give peace a chance and introduce him to an angry, confused disturbed young man man fifteen years his junior. Add an obsession to the death and a .38 gun. You get 'The Killing of John Lennon', told in Mark David Chapman's own words, from when he first flies to New York 'because I want to travel' to his reading from 'The Catcher In The Rye' in a court where he stands guilty of murder. Forget the blockbuster idea. If you want to label it, it's indie, art house fayre. It took three years for the money to be raised to make it. Very few special effects, filmed on location. Lots of close ups of hands and feet and faces, along with shots shown over and over again.It is not an easy film to watch, it was as if the happenings on screen had reached out and wrapped me up so much so a day after seeing it it am still stunned and my brain is full of it. The killing itself, along with other notable scenes, of close ups of Chapman behaving in a disturbed, disturbing way, leafing through a magazine full of pictures of Lennon, flipping through 'The Catcher In The Rye', holding it to his face, sitting rocking violently on his bed, dancing around to the Beatles music while his mostly unaffected wife Gloria stands in an adjoining room with her hands flat to her ears, writing 'John Lennon' in the signing book at work, holding a heavy gun and pretending to shoot people outside the window of the Hawaii gun shop, fantasising about shooting two gay men in the next room at the YMCA in New York, his obsessive behaviour after getting his copy of 'Double Fantasy' what turned out to by John and Yoko's last album signed by John, and all to a calmly spoken track of Chapman's own thoughts.The killing of John Lennon itself; the DVD itself has a fifteen certificate because it 'contains strong violence and language'. I have watched many scenes in films that contain violence and language, but the killing was truly horrendous; so bad I found myself speaking out loud, over the roars from the gun and Lennon's body being bloodily torn apart, 'good god, that's enough now!'After being arrested, he had a bullet proof vest wrapped around him to be hustled through the waiting press; as the police captain in charge said, 'This man just killed John Lennon. There ain't gonna to be an Oswald on my watch'. A moment of peace in a toilet, and the captain asked Chapman why he did it. He answered that he liked John Lennon. Helplessly, the captain added, 'so did I'. In fact, whenever he was asked why he did it he almost literally always gives a different answer. I believe he did it for the fame, he was sick of having a wife and a job and living in one of the most beautiful places on earth,living an ordinary life; he needed to be noticed.Today, Chapman is in Attica state prison, in solitary confinement for his own safety, in a room six yards by ten yards. He has been turned down for parole four times so far. But don't pity him. He has never once expressed an apology for what he has done. He's only fifty-four now. If released, it's just possible he might get an obsession with another great person to notch up his fame level again. Chapman might be locked away, he probably would never be released, but he's alive. John would have been sixty-nine, a venerable, well respected old gentleman of rock, rich in memories, like Paul McCartney perhaps even still making music. All that wiped out because a sad, pathetic little oddball nonentity wanted to be noticed.

I'm impressed, I'm very impressed. OK for a good part of the film I felt that we already know all this of Mark Chapman off the likes of many a documentation. I was a wee disappointed the film gets nothing or very little of his little people in his younger days. Now on a more positive note is the strong magnifying attention to detail, these two men, both the assassin and his victim had so much in common, only difference being that from the similar background Lennon walked out the front door and Chapman the back. I'm sure this film is very much felt later on whether the man ought to be forgiven or not at this point. Human psychology and the way people effect each other is one of the most impressive subjects on the planet. Madness is but the devil's diagnosis, our subject is much more delicate than that. Consider how Chapman did not murder Lennon immediately when he got his autograph for a moment there he was so happy. He(Chapman) wanted to find some value in life, A thing all around him he recognized too late. Time has come for me to read The Catcher In The Rye.

On the night of December 8, 1980, John Lennon, co-founder of The Beatles, was shot to death in front of his New York City apartment. Mark David Chapman(Jonas Ball), more-or-less a loner searching for an identity to grab for his own, decides to induce grandiose attention upon himself. Ending his security guard shift in Hawaii, he flies to New York City with the full intent to killing John Lennon. It was a love-hate relationship...Chapman loved the music, but also conceived Lennon to be a phony because of all his material things. Camping outside John's apartment at The Dakota, Chapman does receive an autograph. He would linger longer descending into a madness that would allow him to put five bullets in Lennon. How true this depiction is is very debatable, but riveting just the same. Others in the cast: Mie Omori, Krisha Fairchild, Robert C. Kirk, Gunter Stern and Joe Rosario.