siwyaf Reviewers say this could have been "so much better" but they don't say how. Probably with an entrance of the Doors at the end playing "Soul Kitchen". It's like the movie The Seventh Seal. It's a great movie because of the subject and the way it is presented. I read as much as I could about Chapman including Let Me Drag You Down but this movie ,in a way, is more informative about why he was killed. It won't give you all the answers but it will show you what goes on inside the mind of a killer who wants to be a celebrity. I enjoyed the part where the photographer and the doorman Jose have a conversation with Chapman just before he stays for the final shooting. Jared Leto does a tremendous job of acting. When Mark Chapman reads the Playboy interview with Lennon you can feel that this is the point where he decides to go all the way. I read that interview at the time it came out and thought what an asshole, but so what? I knew the Beatles couldn't be what they were because they would have stayed together if that was all it took. I liked Lennon and thought he was the cool one when he was with the Beatles but that kind of success when your young is not easy to shake off when your older. I wish he was still around though because he was so outspoken it would have been interesting to see what he would have been saying today. Of course he didn't want be a radical anymore so he wouldn't have turned into the Dude.

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.

juneebuggy This was not very good despite Jared Leto's amazing performance. He's probably the sole reason you might want to check this out. He totally committed to this role, gaining a gross amount of weight, so that he looked exactly like Mark David Chapman and acting the part so well, you'll forget its him.This is a docudrama of sorts and follows Chapman in the days leading up to infamous murder of former Beatle John Lennon. I'm not sure that I really gained any insight into his reasons for killing, just a quest for infamy and ultimately a mental collapse.The film sort of wanders and is strange but not in the way I think the director meant to achieve. Lindsay Lohan plays a devoted Beatles fan who befriends the killer and does a decent job.Curiously the actor listed in the credits who plays John Lennon is named Mark Chapman, which is the name of the guy that really killed him (only their middle name is different) wee-woo, wee-woo. Is that real or just supposed to mess with our minds? 04.11

sol ***SPOILERS*** We get the whole story of the murder of the Beatles John Lennon played by Mark Lindsey Chapman, no relations Mark David Chapman, straight for the horses mouth the person convict of murdering him Mark David Chapman, Jared Leto,in his cell at the Attaca Correctional Facility in upstate New York. Chapman a fanatical Beatle fan was so obsessed with his hero John that he traveled all the way from his home in Hawaii to New York City, some 6,000 miles, just to meet him. Camped out in front of the Dakota Hotel on the upper West Side of Manhattan Chapman got to meet a number of like wise fanatical Beatles fans like himself including free lance photographer Paul Goresh, Judah Friedlander. It was Paul, the photographer not the member of the Beatles singing group, who was to take the famous photo of John signing Chapman's Beatles album, with a smiling Chapman in it, just hours before Chapman ended up blasting him.Why! Why! did Chapman do it! Even now Chapman can't quite explain his actions on that fateful night in Decembner 1980. It just seemed that he was so obsessed with John Lennon and when he finally got to meet him something clicked in his sick and disturbed mind that turned him into a homicidal lunatic. John for his part was very nice to Chapman asking him if he wanted him to write anything personal on the album cover that he signed for him which an almost speechless Chapman declined to have him do. That in itself showed how crazy as well as unstable Chapman was and, now 30 years after the crime, still is.Jared Leto's portrayal of Mark David Chapman was right on target. He even gained some 67 pounds, going from his normal 160 to over 220 pounds,to look like him. Chapman was also obsessed with the underground 1960's J.D Salinger novel "Catcher in the Rye" that together with the Holy Bible Chapman was alway carried and was seen thumbing through throughout the movie. In fact it was "Catcher in the Rye" that Chapman was reading when the police nabbed him in front of the Dakota Hotel after he gunned down his hero John Lennon! We'll never really known, I don't think that even the very obviously psychotic Chapman knows, what motivated Chapman to commit the horrendous crime that he did. The guy wasn't that mentally stable to begin with in the first place. And when he finally met the person whom he was obsessed in meeting all these years something snapped in the poor guy's head that turned him into the monster that he became!P.S Check out the now very troubled Lindsey Lohan as Jude one of the John Lennon and Beatles fans outside the Dakota Hotel. Lohan is now in the process, besides getting bailed out of prison, of making a film about the late Hollywood glamor queen Elizabeth Taylor. In a number of the head on shots of Lohan in the movie she, at age 19 and 20, looked far more glamorous as well as cute and drop dead gorgeous then Elizabeth Taylor ever did at the very height of her motion picture career!