The Killing of John Lennon - S F Said - Daily Telegraph

18th Aug. 2006, S F Said - Daily Telegraph

Rock-and-roll twins and a psycho killer

S F Said reports from the Edinburgh Film Festival

The most intriguing British film so far has been The Killing of John Lennon, a dramatic reconstruction of the events leading to Mark Chapman's assassination of John Lennon in 1980. Initially, it feels a little aimless, like its protagonist, but from the moment when Chapman decides to kill Lennon, it becomes utterly riveting.

Jonas Ball gives a remarkable performance as Chapman: all his words are drawn from Chapman's journals, and in the gulf between the strangeness of those words and Ball's calm, almost musical delivery, there is a terrifying, psychotic void.

Made by first-time writer-director Andrew Piddington on a tiny budget, the film was totally unheralded - yet it's original, ambitious and very absorbing. It's a surprise of the best kind, and a reminder of what Edinburgh is all about.

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