Chopper (Dominik '00)

Andrew Dominik's sophomore effort, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, was my fourth favorite film of last year, and I consider it to be one of the greatest westerns of all time. I was stunned when I discovered that it was only his second feature, and his third film, the Cormac McCarthy adaptation Cities of the Plain isn't expected until 2012 (is there any way for that to not be awesome?), so I decided to go back and watch his debut. Chopper tells the story of Mark "Chopper" Reed, a notorious Australian convict who became a bestselling author. Chopper is played by Eric Bana, who gives a wonderful, charismatic performance in his screen debut. As the film opens, we see Chopper in prison for trying to kidnap a judge as a favor to a friend, That friend is Jimmy, a junkie who forms part of Chopper's gang. After a few violent acts (including a brilliant scene centered around his own stabbing), he is transferred to another wing and eventually released. These early prison scenes are probably the best parts of the film. There are moments where the accents seem a bit too thick to understand, and there were bits of the lingo that flew over my head, but this is not a complex film, and these scenes introduce us to a great character and they showcase Dominik's visual style quite well. When he gets out, Chopper just can't fit into his old Melbourne criminal underworld. He starts to work for the cops as a way to get away with more violence, but paranoia begins to destroy his relationships with everyone except maybe his worn out father, who just doesn't seem to care about what his son does. Eventually, everything begins to go wrong, and in the last shot we see the true isolation that Chopper has built for himself in his attempt to become some sort of Australian Jesse James (it's not hard to see how this film led into his next). This film is not as good as The Assassination of Jesse James, but it's an entertaining film with a great performance from Bana.

Rating (out of ****): ***1/2