Legacy of a Law-breaker: Andrew Dominik's 'Chopper' Turns Twenty

An inventive turn-of-the-millennium screen work straddling the genres of crime, neo-noir and biography, Chopper – about titular underworld figure Mark 'Chopper' Read – launched the careers of director Andrew Dominik and lead actor Eric Bana. The film also left an indelible mark on local cinema, offering a template for a quintessentially Australian type of antihero and a grimy, 'amoral' aesthetic for later films about shady characters, writes Kenta McGrath.

Additional keywords:
gangster, true crime, censorship, John Howard, Full Frontal, Geoffrey Hall, Kevin Hayward