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Review

A character study like few others, Chopper mixes humor and extreme violence in telling its tale of Mark “Chopper” Read, a larger-than-life career criminal and tinderbox of violent contradictions. All the more incredible is that the film is based on real-life celebrity criminal Read’s best-selling memoirs. The story begins in an Australian maximum security penitentiary where Chopper is serving time for murder. He is an emotionally complex bruiser of a man, alternately liked, respected and hated by his fellow inmates. Beefy and swaggering, yet with doleful eyes and often-times respectful demeanor, Chopper’s bombastic, pathological, multi-polar personality is fascinating to watch as he can be gentle and thoughtful one moment, verbally assaultive and violently deranged another, tearfully regretful the next. His fellow inmates treat him like a slumbering lion. It’s only a matter of time before this environment of caged men explodes -- but the violence and acts of revenge are all unexpected. The final part of the film, set eight years later outside the prison walls, shows a freed Chopper forced to deal with life, his old girlfriend and the self-perceived injustices that haunt his being. Far from a simple look at a criminal, Chopper uses wicked humor in a relentless portrait of a mesmerizing young man; watching his life unfold is like staring at an impending train wreck.