Chopper (2001)
This Aussie bloodbath has been sold as a blackly comic biopic, but that doesn't seem representative of the material here -- if it is indeed a comedy, it's one of the grimmest and most unsettling ever created. It's a fictionalized account of the rise-to-notoriety of one Mark "Chopper" Read, career criminal and all-around bad dude. As portrayed by Eric Bana, Chopper is a genial, jovial fella who also happens to be a paranoid psychotic demon. Bana's ferocious performance announces the arrival of a major new talent, but the film to which he's contributed the performance doesn't quite work like it should. Whether this is the fault of director Andrew Dominik, the screenwriter or maybe Bana himself is for us to figure out; as good as Bana is, there are times (I'm thinking of the lengthy sequence with his hooker girlfriend in particular) where his vicious, mercurial interpretation of this rotter seems at right angles to where the film wants to go. Stylishly directed, certainly, and incredibly effective in little pieces (the jailhouse stabbing of Chopper is a surreal, brutal tour de force), but it doesn't appear to have anything approaching a point. And if I'm gonna spend 90-odd minutes in the company of an utter bastard, I'd at least like to know why he deserves my attention. Maybe it's a cultural thing.
Grade: C+
This Aussie bloodbath has been sold as a blackly comic biopic, but that doesn't seem representative of the material here -- if it is indeed a comedy, it's one of the grimmest and most unsettling ever created. It's a fictionalized account of the rise-to-notoriety of one Mark "Chopper" Read, career criminal and all-around bad dude. As portrayed by Eric Bana, Chopper is a genial, jovial fella who also happens to be a paranoid psychotic demon. Bana's ferocious performance announces the arrival of a major new talent, but the film to which he's contributed the performance doesn't quite work like it should. Whether this is the fault of director Andrew Dominik, the screenwriter or maybe Bana himself is for us to figure out; as good as Bana is, there are times (I'm thinking of the lengthy sequence with his hooker girlfriend in particular) where his vicious, mercurial interpretation of this rotter seems at right angles to where the film wants to go. Stylishly directed, certainly, and incredibly effective in little pieces (the jailhouse stabbing of Chopper is a surreal, brutal tour de force), but it doesn't appear to have anything approaching a point. And if I'm gonna spend 90-odd minutes in the company of an utter bastard, I'd at least like to know why he deserves my attention. Maybe it's a cultural thing.
Grade: C+
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