CHOPPER

Andrew Dominik’s explosive debut feature announced a major filmmaking talent (THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD would soon follow) and should have been the first in a long run of masterpieces for comedian-turned-actor Eric Bana (what happened?!). Based on the life of infamous Australian criminal and celebrity outlaw Mark “Chopper” Read, who wrote his best-selling autobiography while serving a murder sentence in prison, CHOPPER is a savage, hysterically funny portrait of a man whose appetite for violence is matched only by his hunger for attention. A more conventional film would map out Chopper’s life as a series of crimes and confrontations. Instead, from the first scene – Chopper watches himself on TV in his prison room, mesmerised by his own performance – the film is established as an exploration of one man’s foul quest for celebrity.

Bana delivers a performance of terrifying charisma turning every scene into a powder keg of uneasy laughter and sudden brutality. Part playground clown, part pub philosopher, and part psychotic brute, Bana’s Chopper stands alongside Joe Pesci’s Tommy in GOODFELLAS as one of cinema’s great lovably hideous psychopaths. Simultaneously repulsive and magnetic, CHOPPER remains one of the great cult crime films of the 21st century: shocking, deeply sad, and laugh-out-loud funny.