Eric Bana's Chopper is so good, it's criminal

THE late Mark "Chopper" Read, celebrated author and standover man, is reputed to have given qualified approval to Andrew Dominik's film about him.

So good, it's c...

THE late Mark "Chopper" Read, celebrated author and standover man, is reputed to have given qualified approval to Andrew Dominik's film about him - a brilliant and scarifying study of a deranged personality who has come to rank with Ned Kelly and Squizzy Taylor in the pantheon of Australian criminals.

Chopper (Saturday, 9.30pm, SBS One) is not a biopic but succeeds as a warts-and-all psychological study of a unpredictable and in many ways brilliant man with an insatiable taste for violence. It was Dominik's debut feature in 2000, horrifying, hilarious and genuinely original, with a central performance by Eric Bana of astonishing stamina and virtuosity.

Viewers should be aware that the uncut version of Chopper contains scenes of nauseating violence that would never have been allowed on television in Chopper's day, including prison scenes as tough as anything I can remember in this troubling genre. Strong stomachs are called for.

SBS is showing two other notable Australian films this week. Paul Goldman's Suburban Mayhem (Saturday, 11.15pm, SBS One), a black satire on the limits of unscrupulous ambition, had its first screening in Cannes in 2006. It's the story of Katrina (Emily Barclay), a single mum who lives in a world of fast cars, sex and petty crime and will stop at nothing to get what she wants. When her father threatens to contact welfare authorities and have her child taken into care, she comes across as a worthy rival to "Chopper" Read.

Sleeping Beauty (Friday, 11.05pm, SBS One), Julia Leigh's directorial debut, is neither a ballet film nor an animated Disney fairytale. Emily Browning is Lucy, a young university student who earns some needed cash by working in a specialised brothel run by a wonderfully nasty Rachael Blake. Lucy allows herself to be drugged into unconsciousness while elderly men are free to fondle (but not penetrate) her body. It works as a mystery story, as a thriller and as a chilling commentary on the debasement of human values in a materialist world.

In Michael Ritchie's thrilling 1969 film Downhill Racer (Tuesday, 1.35am, ABC1), Robert Redford plays an ambitious skier determined to win Olympic gold in the downhill racing event. The character is no two-dimensional hero but an oddly conflicted and often unlikable guy at odds with his coach (Gene Hackman). Fine performances all round and some great action sequences. And, yes, that's Redford doing his own skiing, filmed by another real-life skier following in his tracks. A sporting classic.

Chopper (MA15+)

4 stars

Saturday, 9.30pm, SBS One

Sleeping Beauty (MA15+)

3.5 stars

Friday, 11.05pm, SBS One

Downhill Racer (PG)

3.5 stars

Tuesday, 1.35am, ABC1