Chopper (2000)
Directed by Andrew Dominik
**3/4
Eric Bana made cinema headlines for his method portrayal of Australian criminal Mark Brandon 'Chopper' Read. After all, Bana gained 30 pounds to play the self-centered, mentally-disturbed Read. And his performance is disturbingly on — in fact, it was so on that we became a little concerned for Bana himself. Read is the sort of Bonnie & Clyde criminal who won over a nation of fans through the media, and through several books that he published while in prison. This film, not at all successfully, charts his random acts of extreme violence and also his work as a hit man for the Australian police. A terrible waste of a life, and not a wise use of celluloid, even from the writer-director who went on to make the far superior Assassination of Jesse James. Skip this one and watch that instead.
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