‘Lennon Report’ is a rare, haunting drama of the Beatle’s killing
“The Lennon Report” is a brisk, low-budget drama that re-creates the events of Dec. 8, 1980, as experienced by the police, doctors and reporters involved. The assassination of John Lennon was an earthquake — the whole country stopped and mourned for days — but the epicenter was New York City, where Lennon lived and where Mark David Chapman committed the murder.
Honestly, I can’t tell for sure how younger people will react to this film. After all, it is almost impossible, and it should be impossible, to truly mourn tragedies that took place before you were born. To do so would be akin to rejecting the world, when the business of each generation is to embrace the world and move life forward.
But the public tragedies that take place during our own lives can be lasting and unshakeable, and for many of a certain age, the death of John Lennon is not something we’ve ever quite gotten over. Every Beatles song brings an undertone of mourning. Every film or newsreel brings an underlying pain.
So I can’t tell if this movie is for everybody, or rather just for people old enough to remember John Lennon as a living person. In any case, it’s a satisfying drama that inverts the usual way of building interest and suspense. Instead of wondering what’s going to happen, we sit with the knowledge and wait for every character to react to what we already know.
The movie also provides information not in wide currency. For example, the emergency room doctors were working on Lennon for perhaps a half hour before they knew just who was on the table in front of them.
By: Mick LaSalle
Source: SFGate
