Wiry Jared Leto makes a remarkable physical transformation in Chapter 27, so remarkable that the movie can’t quite see past it. The picture’s primary concern is how much Leto looks like the doughy, pasty Mark David Chapman, who shot and killed John Lennon outside his New York City apartment building in 1980. The picture ostensibly is about the last few days in Chapman’s life before the murder, but it’s really about how much Leto’s belly bulges over his waistband. I wish writer-director J.P. Schaefer had spent more time filling in Chapman’s tortured interior life than chronicling his exterior characteristics. Even when an actor is pulling a shocking physical stunt, it’s what’s inside that counts.
