Susan Granger’s review of “The World’s Fastest Indian” (Magnolia Films)
Anthony Hopkins channels Steve McQueen as an indomitable motorcycle racer who is determined to enter his 1920 Indian Twin Scout in competition at Utah’s Bonneville Salt Flats.
An eccentric car mechanic in Invercargill, a small coastal town in New Zealand, 72 year-old Burt Munro (Hopkins) has a dream: setting the world’s land-speed record. He’s modified his red, rocket-shaped antique motorbike to operate at more than 200 m.p.h., observing that at that speed, “You live more in five minutes than most people live in a lifetime.” Ever the optimist, his enthusiasm is contagious, even though his health is precarious and his unstable relic has no brakes. Working as a galley cook on a small freighter from New Zealand to Los Angeles, then driving to Utah, he ingeniously makes friends along the way, including an amiable transvestite (Chris Williams), a Salvadoran used-car salesman (Paul Rodriguez), a lonely widow (Diane Ladd) with welding equipment, a helpful hitch-hiking soldier (Patrick Flueger) and an influential competitor (Christopher Kennedy Lawford) who persuades skeptical officials to “bend” the rules to allow Munro to qualify for the annual “Speed Week” competition.
Writer/director Roger Donaldson (“The Recruit”), who made a ’70s TV documentary (“Offerings to the God of Speed”) about the legendary, real-life Burt Munro (1899-1978), scores with versatile, adventuresome Anthony Hopkins, whose sly, warm, quirky charm elevates this cheery, complex curmudgeon’s journey to an idiosyncratic, endearing, spiritual odyssey. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “The World’s Fastest Indian” accelerates to an uplifting, intrepid 9, hitting “feel good” on all cylinders. As Munro puts it, “Danger is the spice of life.”
