The Killing of John Lennon

Mark Chapman decided that John Lennon should die for failing to live by the principles espoused in his song Imagine. Chapman also hoped that shooting the former Beatle would alert the world to the message in JD Salinger's novel of teenage alienation, Catcher in the Rye. Taking lines verbatim from Chapman's diaries and testimonies, director Andrew Piddington chillingly captures the twisted logic of the security guard who killed his hero in December 1980. But this is never a simple denunciation, as Piddington deftly sketches in the domestic discord that sparked Chapman's murderous sense of grievance, and Jonas Ball's compelling performance seethes with contradiction and confusion rather than mindless evil. With Roger Eaton's twitchy camerawork reinforcing the torment of a dislocated mind, this powerful account of a shocking crime is made all the more disconcerting by being filmed in the actual locations where the events occurred.