With this superb true-crime drama from 2000, now on re-release, director Andrew Dominik made a brilliant debut. But in terms of sheer star-birth impact, Dominik had nothing on the breakthrough made by the leading man he’d found, former TV comic Eric Bana who gave the big-screen performance of his life, reeking with lairy anti-charm and black comic charisma.
Bana plays Mark “Chopper” Read, the notoriously violent and misogynist Melbourne criminal on whose unreliable but bestselling memoirs the film is based. We see him in jail in the late 70s, grinning, giggling and monologuing with eerie lack of fear; first launching a savage attack on rival tough guy Keithy George (David Field) in the prison association room, then snarlingly informing his cringing lieutenant Jimmy Loughnan (Simon Lyndon) that he intends to put the whole prison under siege by attacking some warders.
