With the assassin’s own diary to work with, writer-director Andrew Piddington didn’t feel a need to embellish the story of Mark David Chapman in his riveting “The Killing of John Lennon.”
Chapman’s archived thoughts, repeated verbatim in the voice-over narration by the actor playing him, give the movie a properly creepy forward momentum as we follow the killer on his 1980 mission to end the life of a man whose music he claimed to love.
*** RATING | Docudrama
Court-appointed psychiatrists found Chapman delusional and possibly psychotic, but the defendant ended the argument by pleading guilty to second degree murder. He is still behind bars.
As played by newcomer Jonas Ball, Chapman comes off as a perennial loser who finds a kindred spirit in the misfit hero of J.D. Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye.” He is inspired to kill Lennon because of his perceived hypocrisy as a celebrity preaching against materialism while wallowing in his own wealth.
Chapman is looking through a book on Lennon when he is stopped by a photo of the Beatle squatting on the gabled roof of the Dakota building where he, Yoko Ono and their 5-year-old son live.
“Something inside me just broke,” Chapman would later write. “As soon as I saw that picture I knew I was going to kill him.”
Ball doesn’t look anything like Chapman, but his quirky mannerisms present an authentically unhinged character, both in Hawaii where Chapman lives with his Asian wife, and in Manhattan where it takes him two trips to complete his dark deed.
Piddington does a beautiful balancing act, creating a movie that works both on the level of suspense and as a detailed factual chronicle. The shrine to himself that Chapman leaves for the police to find in his hotel room on the day of the murder is a chilling reminder of his dangerous narcissism.
“The Killing of John Lennon”
Unrated 1 hour, 54 minutes. Written and directed by Andrew Piddington. Starring Jonas Ball. Opens today at Starz FilmCenter.
