Chopper [2000] [DVD]

An extraordinary movie about an extraordinary man, the highly acclaimed and award winning Chopper is the boldest and grittiest Australian film in decades. Brimming with dangerous excitement and stunning innovation, the sensational debut from rock video director Andrew Dominik is an exhilarating sharp shock to the system revealing the no-holds barred story of the notorious Oz criminal ‘Chopper’ Read. Told in flashback as Read serves one of his many prison sentences, this extreme biography charts the brutal carnage and wicked sense of humour of a man who allegedly committed nineteen vicious murders and got away with it. Mixing startling facts from his nine best selling books, including ‘How to shoot friends and influence people’, with stylish pulp fiction to paint an astonishing portrait of a larger than life legend. Told in flashback as Read serves one of his many prison sentences, this extreme biography charts the brutal carnage and wicked sense of humour of a man who allegedly committed nineteen vicious murders and got away with with it. Mixing startling facts from his nine best selling books, including ‘How to shoot friends and influence people’, with stylish pulp fiction to paint an astonishing portrait of a larger than life legend.
A great Australian movie, Chopper is loosely based on the autobiography of career crim Mark Brandon “Chopper” Read, whose attention-seeking mix of psychotic violence and matey ingratiation made him an outcast even in the underworld and finally–with bizarre logic–turned him into a bestselling celebrity without any need for repentance and regeneration. Andrew Dominik, a music video maven making his directorial debut, wrestles the unpromising material into shape, using a striking palette of blues inside prison and sickly neons outside, wisely building the film around a terrific lead performance from stand-up comedian Eric Bana as the crook who had his own ears hacked away so he could get off a prison wing where he was marked for death and whose forceful personality means that he can always rekindle a relationship even with those to whom he has done dreadful violence in the past and whom he certainly intends to shoot, batter, rob and betray in the future–with the mildly redeeming caveat that he sometimes drives his victims to the hospital after injuring them. The movie has a lot of smart incidental detail, like the paranoid dealer who doses his dogs’ water with speed, the ridiculous mix-up of an assassination set up in the wrong car park of a nightclub that has two, and Chopper’s repeated mood swings in the middle of lengthy dialogue scenes that begin with conciliation and apology and pay off with doubts and eruptions of violence that leave the perpetrator genuinely regretful of what has happened.
The nicely presented DVD features excised scenes, footage that Dominik shot with the real Chopper, commentary tracks from Dominik and Chopper and the trailer. –Kim Newman