Although I haven't seen an episode since they first aired, I still have memories of them: At the beginning of one episode, for example, the chopper lands with a kite tangled in the rotor blades Mitch calls it a "five-cent disaster" or some such colorful term. I was a much less critical viewer at age 9. I couldn't tell you whether the show was actually good, but it was probably on par with every other cop show (except maybe "The Rookies"). But, as our titular character opines, “even Beethoven had his critics”.Ĭhopper is in select cinemas from August 26.If memory serves, "Chopper One" played in the half-hour before ABC's "Firehouse." Those were my two favorite shows at the time. Others will still be put off by its graphic violence and caustic humour.Ĭhopper won’t please everyone. Will today’s audiences still embrace Chopper? I suspect most will, even if some of its excesses are freshly abrasive.
Given the shift in the public conversation about domestic abuse over the last decade, viewers may have a different response than they did 20 years ago. Your mum’s upset!”) soliciting the audience for more uncomfortable amusement. This brutality is offset with another preposterous remark (“Have a look what you’ve gone and done. Yet, while some of the film’s absurdities will still turn an uneasy grin, at other times its wilful envelope-pushing is tougher to stomach.Ĭonfronting girlfriend Tanya (Kate Beahan) at her mother’s home over alleged infidelity, Read savagely beats her before headbutting the older woman. Likewise, Read’s boasting to a news reporter that he is a bestselling author despite being “semi-bloody-illiterate” retains its humour. Why would I shoot a bloke – BANG – and then put him in the bloody car and whizz him off to the hospital at a hundred miles an hour? It defeats the purpose of having shot him in the first place. When detectives ask Read about a bungled stick-up that ended with a frenzied trip to the hospital, the crim’s denials highlight his own cockeyed logic: Read is at his most ludicrous during interactions with underworld figure Neville Bartos (Vince Colosimo). While his victim bleeds, Read calmly informs responding guards “Keithy seems to have done himself a mischief” - a wry one-liner that has since entered the Australian vernacular. This dynamic is revealed early when Read stabs a fellow inmate in a graphically depicted unprovoked attack. Viewers are repeatedly stranded in the farcical chasm between the severity of Read’s actions and his disproportionate response.Ĭhopper dares you to laugh at things you know you shouldn’t. The film’s humour simultaneously heightens and undermines the cruelty it depicts. His iconic handlebar moustache and innumerable tattoos draw attention away from his earless profile.
True History of the Kelly Gang review: an unheroic portrait of a violent, unhinged, colonial punkĬhopper does not so much glorify Read as present him as a bizarre national curiosity. Our first feature film was The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906), controversial even on its release for presenting a bushranger as sympathetic figure. The most ostentatious of these has characters take turns describing their role in the incident straight to camera in rhyming verse.Ĭhopper also taps into Australia’s long-standing fascination with anti-authoritarian figures. We see the murder of “Sammy the Turk” from several, sometimes contradictory, perspectives. Such nods permit mischievous flourishes of style. You know me! Never let the truth get in the way of a good yarn! A title card declares “narrative liberties have been taken.” As Read quips: The film is quick to acknowledge its undoubtedly embellished source material.
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With this performance, Chopper catapulted Bana’s career from TV sketch comic to an international acclaimed actor. He can radically shift the tone of a scene with a flash of his eyes. His high nasal inflection of voice is utterly incongruous with the tough guy facade. Mushroom Pictures and Pariah ProductionsĮverything about Bana’s performance is captivating. Chopper’s harsh exterior is occasionally betrayed by moments of vulnerability.
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