Hey folks, Harry here with another look at CHOPPER, which seems like a real winner of a flick, well... for those that dig the type of film that it is. Folks from New Zealand and Australia and Europe have been raving about this film for the past 3 or 5 months... Now at Sundance, the US begins buzzing... Read on...
Hey Harry,
Doesn't it suck when you wake up at the crack of dawn to go buy tickets and they're all sold out. Sigh, won't be seeing Brother anytime soon. But I got one here that's aimed directly at the Ain't It Cool crowd.
The overly violent, sly, and witty Chopper.
Chopper (4)
Here's what I'd like to call the Reservoir Dogs of this years Sundance. It's the true look on the life of Mark "Chopper" Read. Why is he called "Chopper," it could be no more than a nickname from all I know, but when you see this guy you understand that there's a new badass in town. A brief few notes on Mark - he's pretty much a household name back in Australia. He has been tried and found guilty for 1 murder when yet he's killed 9 and injured quite a few. The man has also spent nearly all of his adult life in prison - the longest time he spent out of jail for a time is 8 months. But he looks at himself as a hero, a man out there to clean up the streets and wants to be portrayed that way. Many people in Australia buy this and send him fan mail of pictures where they stand at sights of where he murdered his victims. He also has an autobiographical book where he shows himself as the hero he believes he really iss. Half of Australia praises him, the other half knows to fear him.
Andrew Dominik wrote and directed this film which was extremely popular back in Australia. He has a style that is almost like a mixture of Daivd Fincher and Darren Aranofsky - using different camera filters for many scenes but yet black is the most seen color. But the real star here is the man who played Chopper, Eric Bana. When Andrew Dominik was in the audience and said he'd like to bring Eric down with him to do Q&A everyone applauded him as he walked down to the front of the theatre, and then sunk low in their seats afraid to ask him a thing. This is one amazing actor. You fear him as Chopper and he gained well over 30 pounds to play the role.
But what will also attract a lot of people to this film, no doubt, is the violence. This is one bloody fuckin' movie. The first 30 minutes of the film show Choppers' life in jail. We understand in the first 30 minutes of the film why he is to be feared. With those eyes of his, so dark they look black, he stabs a man in the throat and lets him bleed to death. Not badass enough for you? How about this - one of the inmates stabs him six times in the stomach and he just stands there with a look on his face that whether or not the inmate could kill Chopper, he's too afraid to stab again. Yes, this is one crazy man.
The only real downside about this film is that it gets a little bit slow for a bit after he gets out of prison. This is a far different film than you'd expect it to be from this point. Instead of people backing away from Chopper as he walks down the street they'd much rather buy him a beer and tell him that they have no hard feelings for him breaking their leg so long ago. As wierd as this sounds, it's surprisingly true, but it's still rather hard to believe. Another problem the film has is the same problem with Cast Away - after the first half hour it jumps far ahead and 35 pounds heavier than what it just was a second ago. This isn't as bad as Cast Away though - you don't need to know how he survived through prison for the amount of time they didn't show you; one look at this man and you know how easily he survived. These lil problems prevented me from giving it a 5 as I'm sure many people did. The ones that would not like this film are ones that don't have a strong stomach and don't understand the films dark humor. For the rest of you, see this film the first chance you get.
Alright, I hope to have some more films to review - I just need tickets (Hint, hint - those who have tickets they want to get rid of Email me!).
Later,
