What happens when you take the toughest guy you can imagine and make him Australian? He gets even tougher. Mark "Chopper" Read, best-selling author and underworld executioner, is Australia's most infamous and self-promoting criminal. His knack for killing and storytelling set him on an unlikely path toward the fame he has always dreamed of attaining. The film begins in a maximum-security prison, where Chopper's erratic behavior and dishonesty lead his "friend" to stab him repeatedly. Fearing further retribution, he cuts off his ears to obtain a transfer. The story then jumps eight years. Chopper, who's now on the fast track to a place where fact and fiction are increasingly blurred, is released. Filled with resentment and guilt and searching desperately for his hidden enemy, he kills a minor criminal in a fit of paranoia but manages to beat the charge by virtue of his now well-honed fabricating ability. However, he's charged with another offense and returned to jail where he writes an exaggerated account of his life of crime.