Chopper

An Australian crime film. Mark Read is in prison. He has taken long sentences, spent years inside, and tells himself as a legend: how many he killed, who was afraid of him, what he did. How much of it is true is unclear. The film treats that not as a problem but as the character himself. The narrative starts in prison. Read sits with his friends, talks, then suddenly pulls a knife; the scene moves from calm to violence and back to calm at once. Then there is the matter of his ears: he has them cut off for a transfer and tells it as a story. When he is outside the film does not become a chase. Read visits old acquaintances, talks to his mother, sits in a bar, and every meeting carries the possibility of turning dangerous. What the narrative is interested in is not crime but the teller: Read is selling his own story, and in fact he later wrote books and made money from it. The film neither exalts nor clears him; it only lets him talk. Eric Bana plays Mark Read. Until then he had been doing comedy on television, and the part changed his career; he put on weight for it and met the real man. Vince Colosimo, Simon Lyndon and David Field are in the cast. Andrew Dominik wrote and directed; it is his first feature. Who it is for: anyone who likes hard character studies and Australian cinema. Who it is not for: anyone sensitive to violence; the scenes come suddenly and the film softens none of them.