The Killing of John Lennon.

"In 2007, two biopics depicting Lennon's assassination from the point of view of his murderer, Mark David Chapman, made the festival rounds," notes Bruce Bennett in the New York Sun. "Chapter 27, writer-director Jarrett Schaefer's portrait of Chapman starring Jared Leto, and The Killing of John Lennon, Andrew Piddington's small-budget dramatizing of Chapman's fateful journey to the Dakota, with newcomer Jonas Ball as the man behind the gun, glasses, and Salinger paperback.... It is dull filmmaking undertaken in bad faith. I say it's exploitation, and I say the hell with it."

"Piddington's fastidiously researched, dubiously suspenseful character portrait is unable to salvage a lick of hindsight from the tragedy beyond 'Murderous narcissists are people, too,'" writes Aaron Hillis in the Voice.

Updated through 1/5.

"Shot in a quasi-documentary style at the actual locations where the events took place, including the sidewalk outside the Dakota, the movie is extremely uncomfortable to watch," writes Stephen Holden in the New York Times. "Its fragments from the movies Raging Bull, Taxi Driver and Ordinary People suggest the volatile interaction of popular culture and mental instability. And its sampling of vintage clips of the Beatles and of Lennon is heartbreaking."

At Cinematical, Ryan Stewart finds it "ultimately something of a bore.... This film's understanding of Chapman's inner world is fairly narrow - his hatred of John Lennon is more or less summed up in his (Chapman's) assertion that Lennon 'told us to imagine no possessions, but he has yachts and country estates.' The bastard!"

For Filmmaker, Nick Dawson talks with Piddington "about his struggle to make the film, parallels with The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, and the impact of seeing Ingmar Bergman's Hour of the Wolf."

Updates, 1/5: "The Killing of John Lennon is an enticingly dramatic representation of despair in addition to striking a provocative tone," argues Eric Kohn in the New York Press. It "might be the closest thing to the big screen realization of Holden Caulfield, considering Salinger's continuing unwillingness to permit the production of an adaptation. At the very least, it's a good place to start: Unlike Chapman, The Killing of John Lennon is no phony."

At ScreenGrab, Leonard Pierce lists five movies featuring Lennon as a character.

Posted by dwhudson at January 2, 2008 9:53 AM