Powerful

Highly Overrated But Still Good

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

Humour, strong violence and an art-house style plot line (weaving flashbacks with present scenes, fantasy and other memories) make up this cult Australian hit of a movie which helped bring comedian Eric Bana (BLACK HAWK DOWN) to worldwide fame. This ruthless, darkly-written tale charts the ups and downs of Bana's life as "Chopper", a notorious criminal who kills people in cold blood and has his own ears cut off in one gruesome scene.My sole problem with the film is that it feels a bit unfocused – it's more of a portrait than a story and doesn't really progress anywhere. Characterisation is also limited, and it's mainly Bana's winning performance that livens things up. Saying this, the humour comes thick and fast, there are some great one-liners, and realism is top-notch. It's just a pretty difficult film to like or classify.

This is all about a myth this charismatic deviant creates about himself and the film kind of documents his sick action without judging and that's so incredibly interesting, the level of realism it maintains in the light of sheer sickness of its protagonist. At many reviews I've read that only Aussie audience can get this, well its complete BS, I did not have any knowledge of this person beforehand, I enjoyed it tremendously, the lead acting is superb, sometimes I found myself laughing and then felt embarrassed because you really don't laugh at those kind of things, but in this film, you just can't help yourself. Just go see for yourself, it is a dark dark comedy and would be a shame if it remained ignored. Yeah and the storytelling man, at at least three moments I had to rewind to see what the fook happened - many times there are flashbacks of certain key situations told from the perspective of various individuals involved and it's really fun to make out witch parts of what is true and then collect in your mind the big picture and that drags you into the movie big time. And I must tell this one more - Eric Bana was BRILLIANT. And yes, it made me go to amazon and order the book right away,

This film is very well done. I can see why a lot of people compare it to Refn's Bronson. Both revolve around psychopaths who spend the majority of the film inside of a cell block.As expected with Andrew Dominik, the dialogue and cinematography are extremely well done. His transition shots are damn near flawless and the tongue and cheek dialogue is fun while keeping the audience interested. He also does some neat little things to allow the audience to see the film through Choppers perspective. Eric Bana gives a stellar performance (better than Munich in my opinion). With all the weigh he put on, he seems larger than life on the screen (with credit also going to Dominik for the "Larger then life" personality of Chopper). Fair warning though, Their are some parts that are not for the light stomached, but definitely a movie I would suggest to watch.

In an Australian prison, knife-wielding Eric Bana (as Mark "Chopper" Brandon Read) slashes a fellow prisoner in the jugular. Possibly, this is because Mr. Bana does not like his victim's hair. He has covered bald spots with shoe polish. The man bleeds to death. Soon thereafter, Bana's boyhood pal and jail buddy Simon Lyndon (as James "Jimmy" Richard Loughnan) repeatedly stabs Bana. This scene appears to symbolically "copulate" Bana and Mr. Lyndon, who has very nice hair. Bana survives penetration super-hero-style and then chops off his ears to get out of maximum security. Out of jail, he hooks up with old acquaintances and decides to shoot some of them. He pulls out both his pistol and his penis. All of this is nicely acted. The character "Chopper" comes across well, but the film manages to say very little intriguing about him.****** Chopper (8/3/00) Andrew Dominik ~ Eric Bana, Simon Lyndon, David Field, Daniel Wyllie