Eric Bana needs to remember where he left his Chopper

This week, the Judd Apatow film Funny People opens, and among its many good points it features Eric Bana, playing a beefy Australian alpha male. Now, to be honest, he doesn't have all that many funny lines, but he keeps his end up opposite Seth Rogen, Leslie Mann and Adam Sandler. Let's hope it puts Bana back on the road to comedy, or at least back on the road to doing halfway interesting parts. Because the career of Eric Bana is the biggest mystery and the biggest disappointment of my professional lifetime. Some people wonder what happened to Nick Apollo Forte after Broadway Danny Rose. I wonder what happened to Eric Bana after Chopper.

It is difficult to remember now the thrill of seeing that incredible debut in 2000, the star of Andrew Dominik's cracking film about the mercurial criminal Mark "Chopper" Read. "Who is this Eric Bana?" we all gasped. Who was this funny, dangerous, intensely physical performer with such charisma?

Fascinatingly, it turned out that he was known in Australia for being a standup, an impressionist and a sketch show turn on a programme called Full Frontal. Briefly, he had his own show. A lot of Bana's early comedy stuff is online, and I think it stands up well. Here's Bana's impression of Tom Cruise, being interviewed in split-screen by his own character-creation, smarmy TV host Ray Martin:

Then Chopper came along and Eric Bana was badass sex on a stick.

This guy was the new De Niro, the new Pacino. And then … well, what?

Well, he immediately slimmed down so that, disconcertingly, we couldn't recognise him from Chopper, and showed audiences who only knew him from that film that he had the chops to play a traditional handsome lead. He was a super tough guy in Ridley Scott's war movie Black Hawk Down. Umm, interesting, we thought. He's picking up a straight payday in a commercial film. Fine. Good for you, Eric. Now can we have something exciting, like Chopper, please?

Well, then he was Bruce Banner in Ang Lee's Hulk – an interesting film, underrated in many ways. But not like Chopper. And then he was handsome Hector in Troy, a boring performance in a film so essentially dull it has slid in and out of the collective mind leaving no trace. He was Avner in Steven Spielberg's Munich — again, worthy, but the so-what factor was now climbing terrifyingly high. And then, oh dear, he played the poker player opposite Drew Barrymore in the terminally average Lucky You, and he was a boringly slim and conventionally handsome Henry VIII in The Other Boleyn Girl. His Romulan role in Star Trek at least shook things up a little – and then Funny People allowed him to play comedy.

It is the longest career disappearing act in history. What happened? The last 10 years should have been a decade-long festival of Bana winning Oscars for thrilling, complex roles: gangsters, cops, bad guys, good guys, in-between guys. Or he could have been the Russell Crowe of comedy. Or he could have been Coriolanus off Broadway and Arturo Ui in the West End. Instead, it's been one beefcake yawn after another. Well, it's never too late. Funny People has put this tremendous performer back on the right path. He's tried being handsome and dull. Now he can put on a few pounds and go back to being scary and funny – and brilliant.