Down and Dirty Chopper exploits its gory subject to paint a portrait of the criminal mind. He is much like the villains in the recent film 15 Minutes , a sociopath who deliberately tries to exploit, for both status and money, the connection between crazed criminal behavior and media infamy. He is relishing his own performance, comparing notes with two starstruck guards who are watching along with him. Indeed, even he seems baffled and regretful about the results of his violent impulses.
Chopper is, to put it mildly, the quintessential loose cannon.
In the short run he isn't even capable of acting in his own self-interest half the time. His behavior creates so much heat that pretty soon all the other prisoners seem to unite against him. He generates such universal ill will that he has to mutilate himself to get transferred from his cell block and the certain death that awaits him. The rest of the film follows our hero roughly ten years later, when he's briefly out of stir. The only one spared this treatment is Chopper's dad, a loony old coot whose attitude offers some degree of explanation for Chopper's manners.