This biographical drama about the exploits and prison years of the Australian criminal Mark “Chopper” Read, is a must watch for students of screen acting.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 25, 2022

Chopper is a great film.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Mar 23, 2022

The film's strategic blend of comedy and cruelty is constantly unsettling, simultaneously inviting us to laugh at Read's antics and then rubbing our faces in their outcomes.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 27, 2021

Chopper is more than a vehicle for Bana's extraordinary performance; it's an immaculately crafted masterpiece of Australian cinema that feels as fresh, energetic and provocative today as it was the day it was released.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Aug 25, 2021

The fact that Chopper is so engrossing and effective stems from the powerful performance of Eric Bana.

Full Review | Aug 2, 2001

You wonder why anyone even bothered.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 25, 2001

Chopper plays like a nonfuturistic A Clockwork Orange.

Full Review | Jun 15, 2001

It's a great style, it's a fabulous performance, but it never quite finds what it's searching for.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 11, 2001

You cannot look away from him. The performance is so . . . strange.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 1, 2001

The ways Read twists and embellishes the truth become progressively less interesting.

Full Review | May 31, 2001

Bana radiates the sort of warped charisma that explains how an ultraviolent convict could capture the public's imagination.

Full Review | May 24, 2001

Like a lot of video-game violence, much of Chopper is meant to be perversely funny. But it's a different kind of perversely funny.

Full Review | May 24, 2001

Bana's gift -- and his triumph -- is that he makes us somehow care about this magnetic monster, without ever letting us feel as if we've figured him out.

| May 17, 2001

Compelling and funny even when it is indiscriminately splattering blood.

Full Review | May 4, 2001

A stylish, arresting, disturbing film.

Full Review | May 4, 2001

It's Eric Bana ... who justifies our interest with a dazzling performance of blunt humor, unpredictability and an edge of menace.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 27, 2001

Eric Bana ... plays him as an engaging villain with a deft talent for grotesque behaviour and caustic one-liners.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 16, 2001

Dominik doesn't glamorize or glorify Chopper, but his film contributes to making Mark Brandon Read as mythical an Australian rogue as Ned Kelly.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 13, 2001

Too senseless and contrived to succeed as sociopathic comic opera, let alone as coherent character study.

Full Review | Original Score: C- | Apr 13, 2001

For every viewer who is revolted, at least as many will probably be intrigued, if not charmed. For Chopper is nothing if not fearless.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 12, 2001