| The Killing of John Lennon | |
| Director: | Andrew Piddington |
| Producer: | Rakha Singh |
| Cinematography: | Roger Eaton |
| Editing: | Tony Palmer |
| Studio: | Picture Players Productions |
| Runtime: | 114 minutes |
| Country: | United Kingdom United States |
| Language: | English |
| Gross: | $6,975[1] |
The Killing of John Lennon is a 2006 biographical film about Mark David Chapman's plot to kill musician John Lennon. The film was written and directed by Andrew Piddington and stars Jonas Ball, Robert C. Kirk and Thomas A. McMahon.
A British-American co-production, it was not released in the United States until 2008 and received much less attention than the similarly themed American-produced independent film Chapter 27, released the year prior. The film received mixed reviews from critics.
The film follows Mark David Chapman three months prior to the Lennon assassination and contains flashbacks to Chapman's earlier life and upbringing, while also exploring his infatuation with J.D. Salinger's 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye and the links between this and his motivation for the killing.
John Lennon, George Harrison, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr appear as themselves in archive footage from the 1960s. Ted Koppel appears as himself, a news anchor from ABC News, on 9 December 1980. President Ronald Reagan also appears as himself in archive footage from the assassination attempt in 1981.
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 39% based on 36 reviews, with an average rating of 4.9/10. The website's critics consensus reads: "Despite a committed performance by newcomer Jonas Ball, The Killing of John Lennon is ultimately a flimsy character study."[2] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 49 out of 100, based on 10 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[3]