Chapter 27

2007 "He came to New York to meet John Lennon... and the world changed forever."
5.6| 1h24m| R| en| More Info
Released: 25 January 2007 Released
Producted By: Peace Arch Entertainment Group
Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
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Synopsis

A film about Mark David Chapman in the days leading up to the infamous murder of Beatle John Lennon.

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screenchills Mark David Chapman had very little self worth or reason to live in his mind. After traveling the world and ending up in a paradise (Hawaii), he experiences joy only in small rushes, and can only remark on a short period of meaningful moments in his life, when he helped Vietnamese children. Now he's grabbing at old obsessions, becoming Holden Caulfield, out to kill the most famous "phony" that he knows because his existence has to change drastically in some way. As for the film, I feel it succeeds in what it tries to do, make you feel anxious, awkward, lonely and somewhat sick to the stomach as Chapman certainly was. I feel it's helpful to relive sad stories once in a while and to grieve for your own losses in those moments of reflection. That's how I felt when I watched this and I ended up revisiting Lennon's great solo work, tearing up and telling myself, his peaceful, loving messages must live on some way in my life.
AudioFileZ To this viewer the most revealing thing learned from the movie is Chapman's delusion about somehow righting Lennon's infamous comment when he was addressing the popularity of The Beatles. He was struggling between the kindness of John and his own inner demons to which you wonder if his delusional state hadn't been so fragile, perhaps, he may have just left without shooting Lennon. In the end he was just too filled with a darkness. It begs the question is some mental illness the spawn of true evil creation or something else entirely? In the end that's a question that can't be definitively answered. The only thing that is sure is this is the intersection of very misguided person and an artist who cast a long shadow. A dark turn ensued.This is not an entertaining film, it's a hard ride. While it focuses on Chapman's evil dead, it does have some added value of humanizing him as a truly boxed-in and conflicted person - who needed treatment and help. Leto channels all this quite effectively. It's so good it's almost like he's not an actor so much as he's Chapman. Lindsay Lohan gives a totally honest performance as a girl who befriended Chapman and flees sensing danger. The guy playing the photographer is true to the N.J. good guy who tolerates little nonsense. He's lucky he didn't get shot because, while forgiving, he totally ticked off Chapman. In fact all the bit parts are expertly woven in adding sinister layers of Chapman's interactions which almost always veered to something unsettling and strange. Finally, the cinematography captures the somewhat isolating coldness of the NYC winter as the backdrop to this terrible moment in time. For a dour and down movie I'd say this rings true with little bombast…Just telling it straight like a documentary, but ultimately more personal and haunting. All in all, recommended.
dylanpatrickbaldwin Chapter 27 is a very tragic film, both in the subject matter of John Lennon's murder as well as its sheer amount of unreached potential. Firstly, I'll get this out of the way: Jared Leto's performance is absolutely sublime. He plays a Mark David Chapman who is awkward, sad, and kind of a loser, but simultaneously very chilling and dark. It is truly the performance of an actor who has completely immersed himself in the role, and brings it to a 6 from a 5 or even a 4 singlehandedly for me. In fact, all of the performances are at least decent. The direction is interesting, showcasing Chapman's deterioration as it goes on, and the use of hand-held camera in most shots gives a much more realistic, human feel to all of the increasingly disturbing goings-on throughout the film. There are a few very interesting recurring motifs that enlighten some of the stranger aspects of Chapman's personality, and begin to explain. It has all of this going for it, so the question remains: where does this movie fail? Well, I think it must be mentioned that the film was cut a full 16 minutes from its original Sundance version. Whatever the reasons for these cuts, whether the original version was poorly received and the missing minutes may have actually detracted from the rest of the film or simply a classic case of production studios not understanding an artistic vision, they severely hurt the overall product. I have read that the main point of the film is that Chapman is a metaphor for America as a whole, which has never managed to pull itself out of a state of adolescent confusion. This theory is supported by certain parts of the film, particularly at the beginning and the end, but I'm not sure that the director's vision is really focused enough to actually make that the case. Chapter 27 seems generally confused as to its intended purpose. Is it a character study of a severely damaged individual? No, the film distances itself from that interpretation almost immediately when Chapman narrates that his early childhood and abusive father is "not important". Is it a tragedy of a man who wants nothing more than to find an identity, and in doing so destroys his life? That is closer, and some evidence does bear that out to a point, but again I don't feel as if the tone of the film's conclusion really makes that the case. Perhaps this has been rather vague, but the truth is that Chapter 27, while certainly interesting, is a woefully pointless piece of cinema. Jared Leto's performance aside, this film is really nothing very special; it simply exists, rather uninterpretable. With all that it has going for it, it could have and most likely should have been much better.
museumofdave Many viewers seem to want to blame the director of this film for shooting John Lennon all over again, or emphasize that former sigh-guy Leto put on 80 pounds to inhabit the slovenly, corpulent body of Mark David Chapman and to no avail Those of us who lived through the Beatles, who admired them, were horrified by what seemed to be an inexplicable killing--and wanted explanations, as we want to understand the killing of a beloved celebrity or a president.As depicted in this film, the twisted psyche of this killer is not revealed--as as Friday says in Dragnet, we just get the facts, which are vivid enough to give us some idea of the weird hallucinations that went on in the mind of a killer obsessed with one of the most influential men on the planet. Since you know how this story is bound to end, you only might want to watch it if you want to see an acting tour-de-force or get some notion of what kind of sickness infested the man who called himself Holden. This film is not a cheerer-upper, and doesn't offer the usual voyeuristic excitements, but it seems sincere and well-assembled and Leto deserves credit for not wanting always to be The Dreamboat Guy.