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Jared Leto, Lindsay Lohan, Judah Friedlander, Matthew Humphreys. Written by J.P. Schaefer, based on the book Let Me Take You Down by Jack Jones. 84 minutes. Rated R. 84 minutes. Peace Arch Entertainment Group. Vitagraph Films.

J.P. Schaefer’s Chapter 27, the long-delayed biopic of John Lennon shooter Mark David Chapman (Jared Leto) and his few days in New York prior, is a muddled movie featuring a committed performance from its lead actor but a screenplay that doesn’t take us anywhere new.

Right away, we’re told in voice over that Chapman will offer no clues as to his history or what made him the man who arrived in New York with murder on his mind. Okay, fine.

So what do we learn from Chapter 27? Nothing we didn’t already know. Chapman arrives in New York that fateful week in 1980, stakes out the Dakota, checks into a hotel and slowly loses his mind until he pulls the trigger. The obsessions are all here, from Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye to his conflicted ambivalence as a fan of Lennon and an assassin determined to bring down the icon he deems a false prophet. And he does.

Executive producer Leto’s well-publicized 60 pound weight gain enables the unrecognizable actor to disappear into the role, and at times he capably projects the inner demons fueling Chapman’s sexual, theological, literary and pop cultural obsessions, though the performance is pitched at one level throughout and betrayed by a shallow screenplay, inspired by Jack Jones’ 1992 book Let Me Take You Down.

Chapter 27’s fatal mistake is that it refuses to look deeply enough inside of Chapman, instead trotting out the facts in a straightforward manner absent of psychological insights or depth. What’s onscreen here is a lethargic, scaled-down Taxi Driver, as Chapman spends long stretches holed up in a low-rent hotel room entertaining macabre plans in overused voiceover.

The film shuttles back and forth between the hotel room and the sidewalk, pausing for a budding friendship with a groupie named—you guessed it—Jude (Lindsay Lohan), an interlude with a prostitute (Jean Forier), a fictionalized chance meeting with little Sean Lennon in Central Park and a confrontation with the lone paparazzo (Judah Friedlander) who immediately sees something amiss with overzealous fan.

Unconcerned with making larger statements about our obsession with celebrity or the cultural impact of Lennon’s death, Chapter 27 isn’t so much a bad picture as a pointless one marching to a foregone conclusion. What we are left with is a dreary take on a story we already know, told in an economical 84 minutes and without a single insight.

- Lee Shoquist

lee@atnzone.com

Chapter 27 is currently playing at Landmark’s Century Cinema in Chicago: www.landmarktheaters.com