The loser who shot Lennon

Piddington, however, has made a film that, if only for the sharp skill of its making and the acting of Jonas Ball as the disturbed Chapman, a nonentity in everything he did besides the killing, commands some respect.

It was made for virtually nothing and has a style that belies that fact. Piddington posits that Chapman both loved and hated Lennon for reasons deep within himself rather than any which had much to do with the idol he shot.

The director bases his theory on Chapman's own diaries and comments which are liberally quoted. His obsession with JD Salinger's Catcher in the Rye, his disgust with his parents, his failure to make any real contact with his Japanese-American wife and his inadequacy as a human being are all there. Even his brief relationship with the prostitute he buys prior to the assault is painted as peculiarly dismal.

Piddington never pontificates. He allows us to think our own thoughts while quietly sifting the evidence at his disposal. But you still ask yourself, since Chapman thought the killing was the only way he could become notable, why a film has been made that helps to do just that as he moulders in prison, largely in seclusion for fear of reprisals from the other inmates.

The film is good enough almost to outweigh such considerations, because of the care with which it is made and Ball's quietly effective tour de force as a young man who cheerfully demanded and got Lennon's autograph earlier on the day he killed him.

It is a performance that shows us a dull, muddled and hopeless youth who found it easy enough to buy a gun but less easy to fire it into the back of an icon of the times. Afterwards he claimed he had no real idea why he did it. But we know better. It was the only way he could somehow justify an existence which has now been effectively stunted for life.

The Killing Of John Lennon