Burt and his Indian. It's like a motorcycle wearing a jacket.

The World’s Fastest Indian stars Anthony Hopkins as Burt Munro, a real-life New Zealander whose consuming passion is the 1920s Indian motorcycle of the title. Like Tom Cruise in Top Gun, Burt’s got a need, a need for speed. (Though I think he actually gets lucky more often than Mr. Cruise did in that movie. Go get ‘em, Burt!)  He spends most of his time and retirement money tinkering with the bike in a never-ending quest to get it to go faster. His dream is to take it to the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah for the annual speed trials so he can determine once and for all just how fast it is. A less-than-promising medical diagnosis prompts Burt to make the trip sooner rather than later and before you can say “Bob’s your uncle” he’s left his small town of Invercargill for the unknown dangers of 1960’s Los Angeles and the Great American West.

Where he disappeared and was never heard from again.

Okay, I’m kidding about that last part. The World’s Fastest Indian is actually a much sweeter story than that. Burt has some setbacks and runs into a lot of characters on his journey, most of whom would probably consider themselves too worldly to care much about one old guy from New Zealand, but with his straightforward manner and willingness to take people as they are Burt rarely comes out the loser in these encounters. Everybody from a transvestite hotel clerk to a randy widow to the high-tech speed junkies at Bonneville are charmed by Burt and want to help him achieve his goal. All of which, yes, could be construed as a little convenient, a little schmaltzy. But the truth is, it works. Burt could come across as saccharine and unrealistically saintly but in the hands of Hopkins and writer/director Roger Donaldson it’s believable that this unpretentious, openhearted guy could touch the hearts of those he meets. I didn’t leave the movie any more interested in motorcycles than when I went in, but I did come out thinking I need to be more open to the people around me. After all, there are some real characters out there. 

Gorilla Pants rating: 3 out of 4 bananas