''Chopper'' is a 2000 Australian

crime drama film Crime film is a film belonging to the crime fiction genre. Films of this genre generally involve various aspects of crime and fiction. Stylistically, the genre may overlap and combine with many other genres, such as drama or gangster film, but al ...

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-n ...

, 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, providing a personal narrative that reflects on the author's experiences, memories, and insights. This genre allows individuals to share thei ...

books by the criminal turned author Mark "Chopper" Read. The film stars

Eric Bana Eric Martin Andrew Banadinović (born 9 August 1968), known professionally as Eric Bana (), is an Australian actor. He began his career in the sketch-comedy series '' Full Frontal'' before gaining notice in the comedy drama '' The Castle'' (199 ...

as the title character and co-stars

Vince Colosimo Vincenzo Colosimo is an Australian 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 previously married to Australian actress Jane Hall ...

Simon Lyndon Simon Lyndon is an Australian actor and director. Early life and education Simon Lyndon was born in Lewisham, London in 1971 and migrated to Australia with his family in 1981. He grew up in Fremantle, Western Australia. Simon attended John ...

, Kate Beahan and David Field. The film follows Read's life and time in prison. The film grossed A$6.8 million worldwide and received positive reviews. It has since garnered a

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

Plot

In 1978 Victoria, Mark "Chopper" Read is an inmate at

Pentridge Prison HM Prison Pentridge, better known as Pentridge Prison, was an Australian prison established in 1851 in Coburg, Victoria. The first convicts arrived at the gaol in 1851. The facility closed on 1 May 1997, although some of the heritage-listed buil ...

. 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 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 an agreement that specifies certain legally enforceable rights and obligations pertaining to two or more parties. A contract typically involves consent to transfer of goods, services, money, or promise to transfer any of thos ...

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 is revealed that Mark is serving a 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 apologises and gives money to Jimmy. In a car park 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 of Neville Bartos, and is sentenced to 5 years.

Cast

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 ki ...

special features. The biggest production difficulty was being allowed to use the

Coburg, Victoria Coburg is an inner suburb in Melbourne, Victoria (Australia), Victoria, Australia, north of Melbourne's Melbourne city centre, Central Business District, located within the Cities of City of Darebin, Darebin and City of Merri-bek, Merri-bek Loc ...

, 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 start 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, suspicion, or fear, often to the point of delusion and irrationality. Paranoid thinking typically includes persecutory beliefs, or beliefs of con ...

and

agoraphobic Agoraphobia is an anxiety disorder characterized by symptoms of anxiety in situations where the person perceives their environment to be unsafe with no way to escape. These situations can include public transit, shopping centers, crowds and q ...

atmosphere called "visual overload" by the director Andrew Dominik. This was attained by lighting, choice of

film stock Film stock is an analog medium that is used for recording motion pictures or animation. It is recorded on by a movie camera, developed, edited, and projected onto a screen using a movie projector. It is a strip or sheet of transparent pl ...

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 aggregator, 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 ...

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 of Australia's notorious author/criminal."

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

of the ''

Chicago Sun-Times The ''Chicago Sun-Times'' is a daily nonprofit newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Since 2022, it is the flagship paper of Chicago Public Media, and has long held the second largest circulation among Chicago newspaper ...

'' 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 Margeret Anne Jones-Owen, 15 July 1944) is an Australian film critic, writer, producer, and television personality. Early life Pomeranz was born Margeret Anne Jones-Owen on 15 July 1944 in Waverley, a suburb of Sydney ...

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 1939) is an English-Australian film critic and historian. He has also worked as a journalist, interviewer, educator, television personality, and producer. His career as a film critic, writer, and educator in Austral ...

, 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 ''20 to One'' (known as ''20 to 1'' before 2016) is an Australian television series on the Nine Network from 2005, that counts down an undefined "top 20" of elements or events of popular culture, such as films, songs, or sporting scandals. The ...

'' episode ''Great Aussie Films'', where ''Chopper'' came 17th.

Box office

''Chopper'' grossed A$300,000 in previews before becoming the number one film in Australia with a gross of A$1.8 million in its opening week. It went on to gross A$5,912,119 in Australia It grossed US$0.2 million in the United States and Canada and US$0.3 million in other territories for a worldwide total of A$6.8 million.

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 singer and songwriter whose career spanned nearly 75 years, from his first concerts in 1930 with a marathon dance company to his final performa ...

*"Black and Blue" –

Chain A chain is a serial assembly of connected pieces, called links, typically made of metal, with an overall character similar to that of a rope in that it is flexible and curved in compression but linear, rigid, and load-bearing in tension. A ...

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

Rose Tattoo Rose Tattoo are an Australian Pub rock (Australia), 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' R ...

*" Forever Now" –

Cold Chisel Cold Chisel are an Australian Pub rock (Australia), pub rock band, which formed in Adelaide in 1973 by mainstay members Ian Moss on guitar and vocals, Steve Prestwich on drums, Les Kaczmarek on bass and Don Walker (musician), Don Walker on pia ...

*"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 black comedy films 2000 crime comedy films 2000 crime drama films 2000 directorial debut films 2000 films 2000s biographical films 2000s crime comedy-drama films 2000s English-language films 2000s hood films 2000s prison drama films Australian black comedy films Australian crime comedy-drama films Australian vigilante films Biographical films about gangsters English-language biographical films English-language black comedy films English-language crime comedy-drama films Films about organised crime in Australia Films based on biographies Films based on works by Australian writers Films directed by Andrew Dominik Films produced by Michele Bennett 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