''Chopper'' is a 2000 Australian

crime drama film In ordinary language, a crime is an unlawful act punishable by a state or other authority. The term ''crime'' does not, in modern criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition,Farmer, Lindsay: "Crime, definitions of", in Can ...

written and directed by

Andrew Dominik Andrew Dominik (born 7 October 1967) is an Australian film director and screenwriter. He has directed the crime film '' Chopper'' (2000), the Western drama film ''The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford'' (2007), the neo-noir ...

, in his feature directorial debut, based on the

autobiographical An autobiography, sometimes informally called an autobio, is a self-written account of one's own life. It is a form of biography. Definition The word "autobiography" was first used deprecatingly by William Taylor in 1797 in the English peri ...

books by criminal turned author

Mark "Chopper" Read Mark Brandon "Chopper" Read (17 November 1954 – 9 October 2013) was an Australian convicted criminal, gang member and author. Read wrote a series of semi-autobiographical fictional crime novels and children's books. The 2000 film '' Chop ...

. The film stars

Eric Bana Eric Banadinović, (born 9 August 1968), known professionally as Eric Bana (), is an Australian actor and comedian. He began his career in the sketch comedy series '' Full Frontal'' before gaining notice in the comedy drama '' The Castle'' (19 ...

as the title character and co-stars

Vince Colosimo Vincenzo Colosimo (born 11 November 1966) is an Australian AFI Award winning stage, television and screen actor. He has worked in both Australia and the United States. He is of Italian descent and lives in Melbourne, Australia. He was previousl ...

Simon Lyndon Simon Lyndon (born 18 February 1971 in London) is an English-born Australian actor and director who grew up in Fremantle, Western Australia. He is a WAAPA graduate. Career Film roles Lyndon played Jimmy Loughlin in '' Chopper'' with Eric Ba ...

Kate Beahan Kate Beahan (born 12 October 1974) is an Australian film actress. Beahan was born in Perth. She appeared mostly in movies and TV series in Australia. Her best-known American film role was playing Sister Willow Woodward in the 2006 horror remak ...

and David Field. The film follows Read's life and time in prison. The film grossed $3.9 million worldwide and received positive reviews. It has since garnered a

cult following A cult following refers to a group of fans who are highly dedicated to some person, idea, object, movement, or work, often an artist, in particular a performing artist, or an artwork in some medium. The lattermost is often called a cult classic. ...

Plot

In 1978 Victoria, Australia, Mark “Chopper” Read is an inmate at Pentridge Prison. Keithy George, another inmate, points to a line in the yard and tells Mark not to cross the line as it marks the

Painters and Dockers Painters and Dockers are a rock band formed in Melbourne, Australia in 1982. Paul Stewart, singer-songwriter and trumpet player, Dave Pace (vocals and trumpet) and Mick Morris (vocals and sax) are all original members in the band which was nam ...

territory. The next day, Mark rushes across the line and stabs Keithy multiple times. The Painters and Dockers put out a $10,000

contract A contract is a legally enforceable agreement between two or more parties that creates, defines, and governs mutual rights and obligations between them. A contract typically involves the transfer of goods, services, money, or a promise to tran ...

on Mark. Mark conscripts Bluey Barnes and Jimmy Loughnan to help him lead a siege on the Painters and Dockers. Wanting out of the suicide mission, Jimmy shanks Mark. Jimmy slashes his own arm so that he can claim self-defense. Mark recovers and is returned to a separate cell from Bluey and Jimmy. It's revealed that Mark is serving a 16 ½ year sentence for the attempted abduction of a judge in order to give Jimmy Loughnan freedom. Mark meets with the Prison Board to negotiate a change of prisons for security. The board declines, so Mark has his ears cut off so that he can relocate to a mental health wing where he serves the remainder of his sentence. When Mark is released from prison, he reunites with his old girlfriend Tanya. While out at a club, Mark flies into a jealous rage and fires several shots with a handgun. Back at Tanya’s house, Mark finds her on the phone with Neville Bartos (

). He physically abuses both Tanya and her mother. Mark goes to Neville’s house and learns that Neville supplies most of the cocaine to the western suburbs of Melbourne and is very wealthy. When Neville refuses to give Mark money, Mark shoots him in the abdomen. Mark goes to Jimmy Loughnan’s apartment that he shares with his pregnant fiancée, Mandy, and their young daughter. Mark reveals that he’s working for the police, stating that he has a green light to shoot criminals and that he shot Neville. Mark tells Jimmy that he heard about the contracts out on his life and that Jimmy was meant to do them, and then holds a gun to Jimmy’s head. Eventually Mark apologizes and gives money to Jimmy. In a parking lot at the Bojangles, Sammy the Turk, another affiliate, states that he wants to show Mark something. Mark produces a Sawed-off 410 Shotgun and after a brief argument, Mark shoots him in the eye. Mandy witnesses the murder from behind a parked car and tells Jimmy. Mandy turns

crown witness A criminal turns state's evidence by admitting guilt and testifying as a witness for the state against their associate(s) or accomplice(s), often in exchange for leniency in sentencing or immunity from prosecution.Howard Abadinsky, ''Organized ...

against Mark for the murder of Sammy the Turk. It’s revealed that Sammy took Mark out to the car park for Jimmy to cash in on the contract against Mark, but unknowingly took him to the wrong car park. Mark beats the murder charge but is convicted of

malicious wounding Grievous bodily harm (often abbreviated to GBH) is a term used in English criminal law to describe the severest forms of battery. It refers to two offences that are created by sections 18 and 20 of the Offences against the Person Act 1861. The ...

of Neville Bartos, and is sentenced to 5 years.

Cast

as Neville Bartos *

as Jimmy Loughnan * David Field as Keithy George *

as Tanya *

Dan Wyllie Daniel Wyllie (born 1970) is an Australian stage, film and television actor. Wyllie began acting in theatre. Early life Wyllie grew up on Sydney's North Shore. He attended North Sydney Boys High School and the University of New South Wales, whe ...

as Bluey *

Fletcher Humphrys Fletcher Humphrys (born 1 April 1976) is an Australian actor. He is best known for his roles as Brett 'Brick' Buchanon in ''McLeod's Daughters'' and as Alex Kearns in '' All Saints''. Career Humphrys made his acting debut in 1993, appearing in ...

as Bucky *

Robert Rabiah Robert Rabiah is an Australian film actor best known for his roles as Hakim in ''Face to Face (2011 film), Face to Face'' for which he was nominated for a AACTA Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Film and Best Actor at the Inside Film Awards ...

as Nick *

Brian Mannix Brian Mannix (born 7 October 1961 in Melbourne) is an Australian rock music singer and actor. He is best known as the lead singer of 1980s band Uncanny X-Men. Career Early life Mannix won a 'beauty contest' in his childhood after being entered ...

as Ian James * Serge Liistro as Sammy the Turk * Skye Wansey as Mandy * Renée Brack as Television Interviewer * Richard Sutherland as Prison Officer

Production

Read himself suggested that Bana play him, after seeing the actor in the sketch comedy series '' Full Frontal''. Bana spent two days living with Read to help him practice for the role, and many of Read's friends, enemies, and old associates were interviewed. Several of Bana's meetings with Read can be viewed in the

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kind ...

Special Features. The biggest production difficulty was being allowed to use the

Pentridge Prison HM Prison Pentridge was an Australian prison that was first established in 1851 in Coburg, Victoria. The first prisoners arrived in 1851. The prison officially closed on 1 May 1997. Pentridge was often referred to as the "Bluestone College", " ...

Coburg, Victoria Coburg is a suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, north of Melbourne's Central Business District, located within the Cities of Darebin and Merri-bek local government areas. Coburg recorded a population of 26,574 at the 2021 census. Alt ...

for the shooting. The prison was being closed down and while the negotiations were underway, the funding for production was delayed. This put off the starting of the shoot. Some extras were hired from former inmates and tattoo parlours. To show the sterility of the prison and to contrast it with the world that Chopper encounters after leaving prison 16 years later, the production was split into two. The first part, filmed at the H Division of Pentridge Prison, one of the actual prisons that Chopper frequented, was as plain and sterile as could be and all the scenes in the second part, taking place in 1986, were overly coloured to achieve a

paranoid Paranoia is an instinct or thought process that is believed to be heavily influenced by anxiety or fear, often to the point of delusion and irrationality. Paranoid thinking typically includes persecutory beliefs, or beliefs of conspiracy c ...

and

agoraphobic Agoraphobia is a mental and behavioral disorder, specifically an anxiety disorder characterized by symptoms of anxiety in situations where the person perceives their environment to be unsafe with no easy way to escape. These situations can ...

atmosphere called "visual overload" by the director Andrew Dominik. This was attained by lighting, choice of film stock used and colours chosen for set decoration. Part one of the production ran from 3 May until 26 May with part two continuing from 28 June until 21 July 2000. The month long break enabled Bana to put on the extra weight necessary to play the older Read.

Reception

''Chopper'' was received with positive reviews. Review-based rating site

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

gave the film a 76% "Fresh" rating from 80 critics, with its critical consensus stating "Eric Bana's performance as the charming but twisted Chopper is the highlight of this disturbing portrait about Australia's notorious author/criminal."

Roger Ebert Roger Joseph Ebert (; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert beca ...

of the

Chicago Sun-Times The ''Chicago Sun-Times'' is a daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Since 2022, it is the flagship paper of Chicago Public Media, and has the second largest circulation among Chicago newspapers, after the ''Chicago T ...

gave the film 3 stars out of 4, praising Bana for his performance, saying, "He has a quality no acting school can teach and few actors can match."

Margaret Pomeranz Margaret Pomeranz (born 14 July 1944) is an Australian film critic, writer, producer and television personality. Early life Pomeranz was born Margeret Anne Jones-Owen on 14 July 1944 in Waverley, a suburb of Sydney. She was educated at the P ...

for SBS gave the film four-and-a-half stars out of five, commenting that what Dominik "achieved is extraordinary."

David Stratton David James Stratton (born 10 September 1939) is an English-Australian award-winning film critic, as both a journalist and interviewer, film historian and lecturer and television personality and producer. Life and career Born in Trowbridge, ...

, in the same review, remarked "there's no doubting the intelligence of Andrew Dominik's direction" and declared Bana's performance as "astonishing." Read later praised Bana's performance on the '' 20 to 1'' episode ''Great Aussie Films'', where ''Chopper'' came 17th.

Awards and nominations

Music

*"Don't Fence Me In" –

Frankie Laine Frankie Laine (born Francesco Paolo LoVecchio; March 30, 1913 – February 6, 2007) was an American Singing, singer, songwriter, and actor whose career spanned nearly 75 years, from his first concerts in 1930 with a marathon dance company to hi ...

*"Black and Blue" – Chain *"Sweet Love" – Renee Geyer *"Bad Boy for Love" and "Stuck on You" –

Rose Tattoo Rose Tattoo are an Australian rock and roll band, now led by Angry Anderson, which formed in Sydney in 1976. Their sound is hard rock mixed with blues rock influences, with songs including "Bad Boy for Love", "Rock 'n' Roll Outlaw", "Nice ...

*" Forever Now" –

Cold Chisel Cold Chisel are an Australian pub rock band, which formed in Adelaide in 1973 by mainstay members Ian Moss on guitar and vocals, Steve Prestwich on drums and Don Walker on piano and keyboards. They were soon joined by Jimmy Barnes (at the ...

*"Release the Bats" – The Birthday Party *"Senile Dementia" – The Saints *"Ever Lovin' Man" – The Loved Ones

References

External links

* * *
BBC interview with Eric Bana on his role in ''Chopper''
{{Andrew Dominik 2000 films 2000s biographical films 2000 black comedy films 2000 crime films 2000s crime comedy-drama films 2000s prison drama films Australian black comedy films Australian crime comedy-drama films Biographical films about gangsters Films based on biographies Films based on works by Australian writers Films about organised crime in Australia Films directed by Andrew Dominik Films set in Melbourne Films set in the 1980s Films set in the 1990s Films shot in Melbourne Organised crime in Melbourne Prison comedy films Australian vigilante films 2000 directorial debut films 2000 comedy films 2000s English-language films