Director: Andrew Dominik
Starring: Eric Bana, Simon Lyndon, David Field, Daniel Wyllie, Vince Colosimo, Kate Beahan
Rated: R

By rights, this should have been a bad film. A combination of Michael Gudinski’s Mushroom Pictures, with only the very questionable ‘Cut’ to their name, Andrew Dominik, a music video director still wet behind the ears, and Eric ‘Ray Martin’ Bana, does not exactly scream pedigree. What a delight, then, to discover a truly great film which might just save an otherwise embarrassing year for Australian cinema (and let’s nobody mention ‘Sample People’).

Pentridge Prison, 1978: we open to the sounds of Frankie Laine crooning ‘Don’t Fence Me In’, the clouds in the sky speed past the imposing grey buildings as time marches by so quickly that it hardly moves at all. A young Mark Brandon ‘Chopper’ Read, so cocky and assured of his own notoriety that he takes great pleasure in using his full name, including nickname, at any opportunity, thumbs his nose at rival crims. A standover man around the Melbourne tracks, he is keen to assert his authority on the inside. From nowhere, a shiv, bloodshed, double crosses, surgery, paranoia.

Melbourne, 1986: Read stumbles out into the harsh light of freedom, filled half with regret and half with adrenaline, and with less ears than when he last saw the outside. Needing money, absolution and maybe a little love, he revisits his old haunts (in overlit, bleached out harsh-reality vision), gets a few scams on the go, and sets himself on the trail to murder and straight back inside.

The usual suspects of recent Australian film (Lyndon, Field, Colosimo) provide a very strong backdrop, but this is Eric Bana’s film. On no previous evidence and very little justification, this is one of those odd moments of casting genius that makes you believe in a higher power. Eric Bana, Chopper Read. Chopper Read, Eric Bana. This does not make sense. Bana’s performance, however, captures depths which the real Chopper probably never knew, creating a character who can slice someone to pieces and then offer them a cigarette, a larrikin who is in no way sympathetic or lovable, but just is.

If ever there was a man that defined the schizophrenia of Australia’s heritage, it is Read. Having the outsiders’ luxury of knowing nothing of Read or his legend, it is easy to see how the Australian public so readily identify with him as the lovable face of bloody murder. Chopper does right by his mates, doesn’t mind a good yarn, and always wins in the end, even if that takes a good few deaths and stints in prison. A good old no bullshit crim, only ever charged with a single murder.

Dominik, with the able assistance of a great pub-rock soundtrack and Mick Harvey’s wonderful score, proves himself to be a very assured director, finding a delicate balance between the first-time director’s love for visual fireworks and a more studied, distanced story — like Bana’s performance, and like Read’s tall tales, Dominik does not judge, nor condemn, nor celebrate, he merely tells it how it is. Or might have been, if everybody wasn’t telling porkies.

We don’t need to know what happens after the film decides to leave (getting pissed on ‘McFeast’ and buying a farm in Tasmania doesn’t make good cinema), but from Pentridge through to his ‘Sixty Minutes’ interview in the early nineties, Chopper’s life makes for a riveting, hilarious story of blood, death, misery and beer — everything a good film needs.