Watch chopper movie1/11/2024 ![]() Andrew Dominik, making his feature debut as a director, has adapted Chopper's memoirs with the enthusiastic consent of their author, and reveals him as a psychopathic egomaniac with an explosive and dangerous temper, who is virtually devoid of any moral sense.Īlthough Eric Bana, better known in Australia as a stand-up comedian, plays him as an engaging villain with a deft talent for grotesque behaviour and caustic one-liners, the background is sad and violent. In 2011, suffering from the hepatitis C he claimed to have contracted in Pentridge, he declined a liver transplant saying he considered himself well down the list of worthwhile recipients.Australians see Mark Brandon 'Chopper' Read as a celeb crim, an underworld folk hero who writes best-sellers and does the rounds of the television chat shows when he's not serving time. ![]() In 2006 he appeared in another, denouncing domestic violence. The following year he featured in a TV commercial warning of the risks of drink-driving. Chopper, the 2000 film of his life with the comedian Eric Bana in the title role, was well received, and Read donated his share to the Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne. He denied any involvement, although in a recent version of his life he did accept that he had shot Collins in 1992.īetween the ages of 20 and 38 Read was imprisoned for all but 13 months, but in the last 20 years of his life he became a celebrity ex-criminal with a beer – "Chopper Heavy" – and a board game named after him. When the biker Read had shot, Sid Collins, then involved in a Russian mail-order bride business, disappeared in Queensland in August 2002, Read was briefly questioned. Leaving prison in 1998 Read turned his undoubted talents to painting and writing and in 2005 joined a successful club circuit lecture tour with the Australian Rules footballer Mark "Jacko" Jackson and the disgraced former New South Wales detective, Roger Rogerson. How many of the stories he told in them are true has been challenged but the books, particularly the early ones, became best-sellers. While in prison he began a correspondence with the journalist and publisher John Silvester, and this series of letters became the semi-autobiographical Chopper, the first in a series of more than 10 factions. Loughnan either considered that Read's plan to eliminate the opposition was taking things too far even for Pentridge – or, more likely, took a contract from the Painters and Dockers to kill Read.Īfter his release, in spring 1992 Read was sentenced to six years in Tasmania for shooting Sid Collins, a member of the Black Uhlans Outlaw Motor Cycle Gang, and was declared a Dangerous Criminal under the Tasmanian Penal Code. It ended in 1979, when Read was stabbed in the back by his former friend, Jimmy Loughnan, and lost several feet of his intestines. In the subsequent war over the protection of Longley and for supremacy on H wing, prisoners, including Read, were icepicked, stabbed and bashed, while acid was thrown on Longley's bedding. The Boys' name derived from the overcoats which concealed a variety of home made weapons, worn even in the height of summer, ignored by prison officials. Read admired Longley, who he reckoned had taught him the virtue of patience as well as strategy and tactics, and he was determined to protect him. What the dockers really wanted was the life of Billy Longley, who had challenged for the leadership of the union and was serving life for the murder of its secretary, Pat Shannon. War broke out.Īll this was merely an excuse. ![]() Read was in charge of bringing them from the kitchen but arrived empty-handed and was accused of eating all 60, something to which he took exception. Each inmate of H division was to receive two. ![]() The story went that the fight blew up over who had eaten the sausages which were to be served as a Christmas treat in 1975. Undoubtedly in H Division he led the so-called "Overcoat Boys" gang in a fight with a team of imprisoned members of the Federated Ship Painters and Dockers Union led by a multiple contract killer. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply.AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |