It almost pains me to report it, so much was my love for Chapter 27, but this may actually be the better of the two movies – I’d heard as much but I’d put it down to general Lindsay hatred and the fact that this one just came first.

While they’re actually both similar in far greater ways than I’d thought – even down to the Jude character played by Lindsay in 27 who I hadn’t actually realised at the time was based on a real girl, Judith Stein – this one seems to me to do a better job of at once displaying fascination for what went on in Mark David Chapman’s head through the months, days and hours leading up to that moment of madness whilst at the same time making no such podium for the man himself.

I would have to see 27 again to be more sure of this, but I know that this movie made me genuinely despise Chapman more than the other movie, even while I was intrigued by his reasoning. It seems perhaps this is why 27 was threatened with boycotts etc while this one slipped out relatively unnoticed – the star cast of the other, particularly the presence of Lindsay when she was at her worst, can’t have helped either.

I know a lot of people think both these movies should be ignored because they give the killer, “what he wanted.” It’s a toughie, I have to admit – and again, it was in this telling that I gave that feeling more thought, where I realised more: Chapman’s still alive, and Lennon is dead. The guy broke history, the world, art, in two when he pulled that trigger, like if there are parallel universes just imagine how vastly different the one is where this didn’t happen. But my conclusion is always – we can’t not talk about it. And amazingly, like I said despite my thinking 27 was an amazing piece of work, it seems that the need to talk about it is so great that there actually is room for more than one movie – even one so strikingly similar in places as this – about it.

I wouldn’t recommend watching them both in tandem or anything – it would likely be either overwhelming or confusing and in any case diminish the impact of both – but if you have any kind of interest in Lennon, “Catcher in the Rye”, the mind of an assassin, then you owe it to yourself to see both eventually. I personally find them both phenomenal, but for now for the way and degree to which it made me feel the “right” sentiment towards the killer, this one just has the edge over 27.

At one point when I was just discovering how amazing cinema was, I was a huge fan of the classic Seventies political thrillers like The Parallax View this harks back to at times. I probably still am, though I haven’t even so much as watched All The President’s Men as recently as I’d like. Perhaps needless to say, at this time of year, with a no-name director at the helm, a title that doesn’t quite gel, and despite the cast, I really didn’t expect this to even touch those classics. Well, to be as brisk with my point as the movie itself is at 86 minutes … I was very pleasantly surprised.

To call this a thriller is an understatement. There’s one point – you’ll know it when you see it, I don’t wanna spoil anything but let’s just say “little girl, middle of the road” – where I literally almost started hyperventilating. As you may have heard, the movie covers the same succession of events – the shooting of a president followed by a series of explosions somewhere in Spain – from multiple points of view. On more than one occasion, these snippets reach an unbearable peak only to freeze and “wind back” to another perspective just before the end is revealed. It’s at times overwhelmingly effective, and to say it’s a movie with twists is the second understatement you could make of it.

For me, it’s the Forest Whitaker “segment” that will really stay with me and that I’ll come back for. It’s always interesting to see what actors do after they win an Oscar and while this does slightly follow the old, “now I’ll do a dumb blockbuster” thing that I think began with Nicolas Cage following Leaving Las Vegas with The Rock, I think more interesting here is how vastly different Whitaker’s character is here from Idi Armin. He plays almost literally a nobody who just happens to get caught up in the story and he does it so endearingly and believably I was on the verge of tears just watching him be so natural before the stuff with the little girl.

No, it’s not up there with the 70s classics – it’d need to be 30 minutes longer and put in a blender with either last year’s American Gangster or Zodiac for that. It is, however, the kind of pure ride I haven’t seen in a while. I remember the interviews with Jennifer Garner and Jamie Foxx over last year’s The Kingdom and while I got nothing from that production it almost seems like this is the movie they were selling. I really loved it.

Even though I personally find it far more compelling even purely on the surface level, I think it’d be hypocritical of me – at least on this first viewing – to not partially lump this in with Zodiac and American Gangster and others from last year in terms of its visual and stylistic aspects often somewhat outweighing its emotional drive.

I looked forward to writing here about the length in hopes it would be one of those rare exceptions where long is good. At times, that’s true – for me it’s the little things, like how even a character’s blink seems to be drawn out over a number of shots; the death of James itself, too, by far one of the most beautiful scenes in the film, the inevitability of it all drawn out excruciatingly. But my attention certainly did wander in places and I see no reason why it couldn’t have been pared down at least below the 2 hour mark. A lot of people have compared the movie to the work of Terrence Malick – both of whose first 2 movies came in at 90 minutes making no sacrifices of depth. I know I go on about this too much but really with the number of great movies coming out now, even those dedicating an unhealthy amount of their time to watching them needs a break

I’m certain it will grow on me with subsequent viewings, but I can’t deny a slight twinge of disappointment as I’ve been looking forward to seeing this one for a long time. Does Casey Affleck deserve the Oscar nomination just for making it through 3 hours without smirking that blasted smirk of his once? Probably not. But I was glad to see him looking pretty much 100% serious at last, and I’d be lying if I said there weren’t a few moments of his that truly caught me offguard. The Nick Cave score works much better with the pictures, too; I’d listened to it before Christmas and, well, it’s really not one for the iPod, put it that way.