Classic Movie

A bloody normal bloke… who likes a bit of torture!

	Think about the more in-your-face moments of Reservoir Dogs and you begin to understand what Chopper is like ALL THE WAY THROUGH.

The plot: Told as a series of exagerrated, unpalatable flashbacks, Chopper is the extremely violent, brilliantly funny portrayal of Mark "Chopper" Read – Australia's self-confessed most famous modern villain.

So what happens? We follow Read as he reveals the truths, the half-truths and nothing like the truth in one of the bleakest, blackest comedies ever put to film. Describing himself as a 'crime commando' who terrorises the robbers and drug dealers of Melbourne, he recounts his story to a female journalist during one of his many prison spells and, with the help of a brilliant performance by Eric Bana and healthy liberalisation of the facts, manages to produce a genuinely disturbing comic tour de force. He gets a cellmate to cut off his ears in prison, gets stabbed five times in his gut by his best mate Jimmy and headbutts his girlfriend's mum after a paranoid tiff. He shoots his mates in their own homes and then drives them to the hospital, gets his cock out in bars whilst speaking to government officials and generally behaves in the kind of unsettling manner Darth Vader could only dream of. Think about the more in-your-face moments of Reservoir Dogs and you begin to understand what Chopper is like ALL THE WAY THROUGH.

Why's it a classic? Eric Bana, at the time Austraiia's biggest comedian and nowhere near becoming a big Hollywood star, drags you throguh the film single-handedly in a performance that would make an in-form De Niro proud. He's more clicky than a grandfather clock, with more front than Selfridges and, despite taking great pleasure in always being the nastiest c*nt in the room, both stupidly engaging and charismatic. Introduce yourself to the real Read on the DVD extras and you'll understand just how special Bana's performance is.