Last year two biopics about John Lennon's assassination made the festival rounds, and are now poised to hit theaters in 2008. One, titled Chapter 27, stars Jared Leto as Mark David Chapman and an actor named Mark Lindsay Chapman portraying John Lennon. While it may be an accurate casting to have Leto playing someone who kills music, his involvement in the film will likely have us choosing the second biopic, The Killing of John Lennon (trailer below).
The film opens at the IFC Center tonight and is prefaced with the line: "All Chapman's words are his own," though more accurately (as The NY Sun points out) they are those of Catcher in the Rye, Taxi Driver and Apocalypse Now -- "it would appear that Chapman's head was not exactly buzzing with original ideas."
The NY Times also weighs in on the 114-minute cinematic jaunt through the killer's mind, saying:
Although The Killing of John Lennon doesn’t ask you to sympathize with Mr. Chapman, who is now serving a 20-year-to-life sentence in Attica state prison, it requires you to spend nearly two hours in his disturbing company. That’s asking a lot. Grandiose, narcissistic, subject to delusions and extreme mood swings, he comes across as the kind of maniacally self-centered creep who, if encountered in a bar, would prompt most people to disengage after five minutes of small talk. If The Killing of John Lennon is a well-made film, it is also a total bummer.
This year marks the 28th anniversary of his December 8th death, a day that Yoko Ono asked be a day of forgiveness in her letter printed in The NY Times in 2006.
