This is a transfixing recreation of the events that persuaded a Hawaiian security guard that murdering an ex-Beatle would alert the world to the message of J. D. Salinger’s cult novel, The Catcher In The Rye.
Speaking lines taken verbatim from Mark Chapman’s journals and pronouncements, Jonas Bell gives an extraordinary performance that chillingly shows how a delusional loser could turn on his idol for failing to live up to the lyrics of Imagine. Andrew Piddington never wholly demonises the misfit, whose rage was rooted in a stereotypically dysfunctional childhood and fermented in a self-loathing that he was too cowardly to endure.