Director Dominik may be a little taken by his subject, but he makes it balanced and actually presents a character rather than just a hyperkenitic comedy killer that Chopper could have become in someone else's hands. The support cast are also good but it is Bana's film and he shows why Hollywood picked him up in the first place. This is not glamorisation, this is a fair look at a man who few of us would want to ever meet. He manages to make this man both a monster and charming in a blokey sort of way, but he also brings out the inner fear and loneliness that Chopper has and the sheer basic immaturity that drives him. Bana is a big part of this and he is really good in one of his earliest roles on film. The script is really well done and it allows us to feel a strong fear and dislike for this man without ever being turned off him to the point that we stop watching or stop being interesting. In this regard it really works, because the film captures a great deal of his character and not just his actions he must be a horror to know and it is this that stops it really glamorising him. The film is amusing and shocking in equal turns and manages to be engaging even if the plot is more of a character study than a plot. There is of course an element of the film liking him, but in fairness that may be the truth he may have been the nice bloke at heart that the film presents him as most of us will know people from clubs and pubs who are salt of the earth and will call you 'mate' all the time until they take offence at any little thing then they'll be fighting before you know it.
The film does a good job of being reasonably balanced it shows Chopper's action in such a light that it is hard not to be disgusted by him and his sheer disregard for human life. In this review I will not even bother getting into a debate over whether or not it is right or not to make a bigger celebrity of Chopper than he already is the book is out, the film is made and it's a moot point. Released years later Chopper leaves prison still his jovial, friendly, brutal, violent and unpredictable self. When Jimmy fails, he claims Chopper attacked him and Chopper does the time while Jimmy gets free. During one of his many stays in prison he is betrayed by his friend Jimmy who stabs him repeatedly in an effort to kill him for a bounty. Mark Brandon Read, aka Chopper, is a small-time criminal who is violent and unpredictable. In case you're interested in more underrated masterpieces, here's some of my favorites: /list/ls070242495 Once you've seen this raw, shocking, at times darkly funny portrayal of a sociopath you'll understand why it single-handedly launched Eric Bana's international career.
This was only the debut feature by director Andrew Dominik, but it's the meticulously crafted masterwork of a driven artist that deserves to be mentioned together with the best debut films by directors of his generation (it would take him 7 years to confirm with his sophomore film, the excellent THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD (2007) that he wasn't a one-hit wonder). Most of all though, it's one of the most fascinating character studies I've ever seen with a tour-de-force performance by Eric Bana that is never less than superb. It's a film about life on the fringes of society, about the lasting effect of growing up in an unstable, violent environment it's about mental illness and the less glamorous (and thus in film rarely depicted) aspects of the life of a gangster and career criminal. Like many of the best films, CHOPPER isn't about one thing, and it doesn't tell one story.
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