Monday, January 22, 2007

Movie: The World's Fastest Indian (4.5/5 stars) 2005

Starring Sir Anthony Hopkins as Burt Munro, a speed freak forever tinkering with his 1920 Indian motorcycle seeing how much speed he can squeeze out of it. In the movie, he realizes his dream and takes the machine across the pacific to the Bonneville Salt Flats in the late 1960's to set a land speed record.

I loved this movie from start to finish, all of Burt's small quirks, his forever saying, "What?" because he was hard of hearing, his laid-back attitude and how easy it was for him to make friends (which he did absolutely everywhere), his encounters in LA, his naive nature... it's all golden.

Having lived in New Zealand for over five years now, it's hard to think of a movie that has captured the unusual kiwi attitude the way this one has. it just feels kiwi, and that's a good thing to be making and showing the world.

The only reason that I docked 0.5 stars from this movie is because of Hopkin's kiwi accent, which was not very good. It IS a tough accent to get right though, and didn't affect my enjoyment of the movie much at all.

This isn't just a movie for New Zealanders though, it's as much a movie about one lone man against the world and the small town man going out and succeeding. It has such universal appeal that I can recommend it to anyone.

3 comments:

Violet said...

Did Anthony end up sounding like an Australian? It was on the telly the other night, but we decided to watch the first hour of King Arthur instead.

Determinist said...

Strangely enough, he didn't sound Australian - he just missed the kiwi accent a bit.

He did sound kiwi on some of his words though. I give him about 6/10 on the accent.

Anonymous said...

Good words.