The U.S. vs. John Lennon

The long legal effort by the Nixon administration to deport John Lennon and Yoko Ono comprises the culminating act of David Leaf and John Scheinfeld's 2006 documentary, a solid but unremarkable film that covers the singer's post-Beatles involvement with American antiwar activists and the government's attempt to eject him and his wife from their New York residence by charging Lennon with being an “undesirable” on the basis of an old British drug conviction. The film benefits from Ono's cooperation in interviews (along with a bevy of others, from Carl Bernstein to G. Gordon Liddy) and the widow's sharing of footage from the family archives, but it also suffers for the same reasons, seeming more like an authorized biography than a genuinely objective film. Newsreel material is interwoven intelligently to provide context, while the portrait drawn of Lennon's committed attorney Leon Wildes—shown in archival footage as well as contemporary interviews—makes the phrase “conscientious lawyer” seem less of an oxymoron. Although not intended as a record of Lennon's songwriting career, the film contains a generous sampling of his music for fans, who will also be amused by the quick wit he displays throughout the clips, and moved by the closing segment on his death. Although it treats the subject with kid gloves, The U.S. vs. John Lennon nevertheless succeeds in ridiculing the Nixon administration's attempts to cripple the peace movement, a Keystone Kops effort that ultimately hurt the perpetrators more than their targets. A strong optional purchase. [Note: DVD extras include 10 scenes of bonus footage (54 min.), and trailers. Bottom line: a solid extras package for an uneven but serviceable documentary.] (F. Swietek)