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CHOPPER
7/10
Australia
2000
dir/scr
Andrew Dominik (based on books by Mark Brandon Read)
cin Geoffrey Hall, Kevin Hayward
stars Eric Bana, Simon Lyndon, Vince Colosimo, Kate Beahan
94 minutes
Chopper
is n comic, Aussie answer to Raging Bull - an artily stylised but
unflinchingly bloody movie based on a violent celebrity autobiography.
There's a lot of De Niro in Eric Bana's commanding performance as Mark
Brandon 'Chopper' Read, not least his physical transformation from fighting-fit
youth to flabby, chunky middle age. And whenever Chopper is roused to
anger or violence - which is often - many of Bana's mannerisms directly
recall De Niro, though in more sensitive moments his eyes and wheedling
voice have softer qualities that are entirely Bana's own.
 It's
easy to overlook the essential flimsiness of the movie's plot, thanks
to Bana's tour-de-force and Dominik's energetic direction, making copious
use of colour filters, bleached images and speeded-up sequences when characters
take drugs - an overused gimmick in cinema these days - as
we
follow Chopper's violent progress from prison to the street and back again,
but surprisingly little actually happens, just one bloody feud inside
and one outside. Perhaps this is Dominik's intent - in one key
scene a cop dismisses Read as a 'bullshit artist', raising the intriguing
possibility that most of his "exploits" are fictions dreamed
up by an articulate attention-seeker. But this promising angle isn't developed
and, by the end, most of the evidence we're given suggests Chopper really
is the volatile psycho his carefully maintained image suggests.
Based
on a series of books by Read, Chopper feels like a drastically
condensed version of a much longer story. We only find out very late on,
for example, that Chopper's nickname derives not from his (unexplained)
metal front teeth, but his supposed habit of cutting off other criminals'
toes - though this, again, could well be another Read fantasy. As with
Malcolm McDowell's Alex in A Clockwork Orange, it's hard to know
how to take Chopper - and therefore Chopper - because he isn't
just the most articulate, intelligent and charismatic figure in
his movie, he's the only character who has any of those
traits. It's a testament to the skills of Kate Beahan that she manages
to make such an impact in the thankless role of Chopper's junkie prostitute
girlfriend.
Scene
by scene, this is an exciting, original picture, with some terrific set
pieces - especially one almost unwatchably bloody scene where Chopper,
desperate for a transfer out of his cell block, gets a fellow inmate to
mutilate his ears. But taken as a whole it falls short of the last Aussie-psycho
movie to gain an international release, Rowan Woods' 1997 debut The
Boys. Like Chopper, The Boys revolved around a phenomenal
central performance - David Wenham as Brett Sprague. But Rowan Woods surrounded
his anti-hero with a vivid set of supporting characters in a claustrophobic
environment and a coherent plot, resulting in a downbeat, mature film
of real psychological depth and intensity, one which challenged as least
as much as it entertained. Chopper
by Neil
Young
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