Fatal Chapter
Jared Leto’s performance at John Lennon’s killer is worth seeing in Chapter 27
By Vincent Cervantes, Staff Writer
Photos courtesy Peace Arch Entertainment Group
With the autographed album Double Fantasy and book Catcher in the Rye on his person, Mark David Chapman shot John Lennon dead near New York’s Central Park about 27 years ago.
Inspired by Jack Jones’ book, Let Me Take You Down: Inside the Mind of Mark David Chapman, first-time director J.P. Schaefer wrote the screenplay for Chapter 27, which chronicles the three days Chapman spent planning and waiting to slay Lennon.
From his plane’s arrival in New York, to his ominous loitering near hotel doormen, to posing as an autograph seeker, Jared Leto (Requiem for a Dream) paints a disturbing picture as Chapman.
There are encounters with devoted fan Jude, played by Lindsay Lohan (Mean Girls), and photographer Paul, played by Judah Friedlander (30 Rock), before blood is spilled that fateful day, Dec. 8, 1980.
The 25-year-old, mentally unhinged, socially awkward Beatles fan – who had see-sawed between idealizing Lennon and desiring to kill him – altered what seemed like earth’s orbit to innumerable Beatles fans, firing five .38-caliber bullets at the beloved, 40-year-old musician and activist outside The Dakota, his New York abode.
Chapman’s motives were fabricated from pure delusion, fueled by an obsession with the fi ctional character Holden Caulfield and his similar tribulations in J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye – which ends at 26 chapters.
Leto’s performance is evocative and exceptional. He is devoured and disappears inside the chemically imbalanced and soft talking Chapman.
In fact, Leto’s dedication to the role was so complete that he drank melted gallons of ice cream to gain nearly 70 pounds in preparation for the film.
Despite Leto’s excellence, the film fails to supply insights as to who Chapman really was prior to coming to New York from Hawaii.
Chapter 27 also fails to take the opportunity to play a number of songs by the Beatles or Lennon – except for its opening with “Strawberry Fields Forever.” Chapman appropriated the first five words of those lyrics for the title of his book. And Lennon fans still journey to Central Park in December to see the song’s title in black and white tiles, across 72nd Street from The Dakota. So couldn’t a few more of those better and more popular tunes have been folded into the soundtrack? Just Imagine.
In retrospect, Lohan’s role as Jude could have been larger, given that her character is fictitious. There’s a moment where she alone could have changed history, but that avenue oddly is never explored.
On the whole, Chapter 27 is worth seeing merely for Leto’s rendition. The turnoff is its snail’s pace and lack of intuition.