Disarming-that's probably the best word to describe the hugely enjoyable story of New Zealander Burt Munro who, at the age of 68 and with barely enough money for bootlaces, set the world's landspeed record not once but seven times running.
***image4***If you don't know better, you might think this is a movie about Lakota Olympic runner Billy Mills; but Steve McQueen fans will recognize the reference as being to the cherry-red 1920 Indian Scout that retiree Munro (played by Anthony Hopkins) lavishes his attention on, rebuilding from the ground up until it's capable of tooling along, oh, somewhere in the neighborhood of 201 mph. The slightly deaf and entirely likeable grease monkey and bike enthusiast is so determined to race his custom-engineered creation in the annual Utah event known as Speed Week that he works as a ship's cook to earn passage across the Pacific from New Zealand to the West Coast.
Once stateside, Munro's struggles have only begun as he still has to make his way toward the Bonneville Salt Flats in time for the races. Befuddled by cab ***image2***fare and suckered by call girls, Munro fortunately encounters good-natured drag queen Tina Washington (a lovely Chris Williams), who helps him negotiate the wilds of Los Angeles. It's an encounter emblematic of Munro's journey, which seems of a piece with such road-trip Americana as Travels with Charley or Blue Highway; the people he meets invariably turn out to be kind, even if at first they present as bristly or suspicious. He finds safe harbor with, among others, a mellow Native man (who offers an evil-tasting but abruptly effective cure for Munro's troublesome prostate) and an especially warm hostess, Diane Ladd. Even the stern, by-the-book race officials eventually capitulate, won over by Bert's irrepressibility, when he shows up at Bonneville having neglected to register and with a vehicle which is, to say the least, unconventional. (Some of his weight-reducing modifications involve strategies like replacing the gas cap with a cork and removing the brakes entirely; when an inspector exclaims in horror over the latter omission, Bert protests: "I'm not here to stop, young man, I'm here to go faster!")
Hopkins has said that this may be his best work and, as strange as that sounds, it may be true. His unerring Kiwi accent; the deferential way he stoops slightly when people have to repeat what they've said; his every gesture uncannily redolent of the way a man moves when he's spent most of his life with a socket wrench in one hand and a rag in the other-there are other actors who could play antiheroes such as Richard Nixon, Titus Andronicus or Dr. Lecter, but very few who can pull off such a seemingly effortless embodiment of the ordinary.
