The film stars Eric Bana as the title character and co-stars Vince Colosimo, Simon Lyndon, Kate Beahan and David Field.

It is revealed that Mark is serving a 16 ½ year sentence for the attempted abduction of a judge in order to give Jimmy Loughnan freedom.

The board declines, so Mark has his ears cut off so that he can relocate to a mental health wing where he serves the remainder of his sentence.

Mark reveals that he’s working for the police, stating that he has a green light to shoot criminals and that he shot Neville.

Mark beats the murder charge but is convicted of malicious wounding of Neville Bartos, and is sentenced to 5 years.

[citation needed] The biggest production difficulty was being allowed to use the Pentridge Prison in Coburg, Victoria, for the shooting.

[4] The first part, filmed at the H Division of Pentridge Prison, one of the actual prisons that Chopper frequented, was as plain and sterile as could be and all the scenes in the second part, taking place in 1986, were overly coloured[5] to achieve a paranoid and agoraphobic atmosphere called "visual overload" by the director Andrew Dominik.

"[7] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film 3 stars out of 4, praising Bana for his performance, saying, "He has a quality no acting school can teach and few actors can match.

"[8] Margaret Pomeranz for SBS gave the film four-and-a-half stars out of five, commenting that what Dominik "achieved is extraordinary."

David Stratton, in the same review, remarked "There's no doubting the intelligence of Andrew Dominik's direction" and declared Bana's performance as "astonishing.