CHOPPER MOVIE FULL

Instead, Dominik focuses on slightly fictionalised moments in Chopper’s life, bookending the film with Chopper’s life in prison. This is not a birth to adult story, colouring in how Chopper became the crim he was.

CHOPPER MOVIE FULL

Utilising an overwhelming master of imitation, Eric Bana, to portray the mammoth violent figure, Dominik creates a film that’s full of gut-twining tension, with tar black comedy, both working in parallel with one another, making for a disturbing level of awareness of the height of celebrity within Australia. Ned Kelly didn’t have the benefit of a broad media landscape in the 1800’s to tell his side of the story, but given the cyclical nature of history, it seems fortuitous that Mark Brandon ‘Chopper’ Read would pick up Kelly’s celebrated and iconic criminal legacy and use the avenues of television and writing to spawn the ‘Cult of Chopper’: a troupe of champions and supporters both domestically and internationally who saw the famed criminal as a champion for them.Īndrew Dominik’s feature debut as writer and director, Chopper, masterfully collates the vibe and ethos of Chopper into a ninety minute powderkeg of a film.

Kurzel’s film examines the relationship Australia has with lionising criminals as celebrities, asking what the weight of fame built up throughout history does to our perception of their illegal exploits. Justin Kurzel’s searing True History of the Kelly Gang worked to slam the door shut on Kelly’s legacy, suggesting that the applied importance of his ‘final’ words – such is life – were misguided, with reports that he never actually said them, and instead they were pushed into his history via the mouth of a politician. His anti-police role in society helped create his celebrity, and even with Kelly killing police officers who harmed his friends and family, and causing all manner of damage to society as a bushranger, thousands signed petitions to stop him from being hung to death. The myth of Ned Kelly’s anti-establishment, anti-police persona has forged a legacy that turned him into a celebrated man, a figure whose existence in Australian culture has endured as a beacon for people to believe whatever they choose to see in him. Australian culture can’t help but make icons and heroes out of some of the most notorious criminals.

Chopper movie