Hopkins hits on all cylinders in 'World's Fastest Indian'

In "The World's Fastest Indian," Anthony Hopkins finally spits out the liver-and-fava-beans aftertaste of Hannibal Lecter.

This is a deliciously pure and understated performance — arguably the actor's best — swaddled in a story of speed, daring and tenacity that literally will have you cheering in your seat.

Writer-director Roger Donaldson, whose thriller-oriented résumé includes the Kevin Costner spy yarn "No Way Out" and the Cuban Missile Crisis saga "Thirteen Days," returns to his adoptive New Zealand to tell the true story of 68-year-old Burt Munro (Hopkins), a hermitlike daredevil who knocked the racing world on its asbestos-coated behind.

The year is 1967, and Munro, a beloved figure in his suburban New Zealand township, lives alone in a grease-caked shed with the hand-modified 1920 Indian motorcycle that ultimately will carry him into the record books.

Living off a modest pension, Munro pours his heart and soul into the machine, along with the liquefied alloy cocktails that he painstakingly molds into high-performance pistons. He's the ultimate RPM-worshiping monk, proven by a shelf of ruined engine components that he labels "Offerings to the God of Speed."

Through it all, Munro has one dream: To turn loose his Indian at Speed Week, a yearly proving ground of all things fast conducted at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. So Munro mortgages his house, crates up the Indian and books passage to America, earning his fare by cooking for the crew and amusing them with doddering-old-man admonishments against nicotine use.

Alighting in Los Angeles, Munro is indeed a stranger in a strange land. He gets fleeced by a taxi driver. He makes friends with a transvestite (Chris "Brother of Vanessa" Williams). He marvels at the bright lights and photo-coded coffee shop menus. At times, Munro's odyssey feels suspiciously Crocodile Dundee-ish, but it draws us closer to him all the same.

Maybe the real Burt Munro wasn't as eye-dabbling affable as Hopkins portrays, worshipped by a cute little Kiwi kid (Aaron Murphy). Maybe he wasn't as tortured by angina, or as haunted by the death of his twin brother. Maybe he didn't struggle as much with a temperamental prostate or have sex with a dusty desert widow (Diane Ladd from “Wild at Heart”).

Maybe, maybe, maybe. The point is, this is what glorious movie illusion is all about, and Hopkins' performance has nary a false moment.

(Unfortunately, the film's relative obscurity has scuttled the actor's Oscar prospects — a real shame.)

When Munro finally makes it to Bonneville — greeted variously with kindness, bafflement and disdain, like a penniless pilgrim at the gates of the Vatican — the movie noticeably kicks it up a notch, with some of the most excruciating, pulse-quickening racing scenes since the heyday of Steve McQueen.

On a most basic level, this is what every one of us hopes our golden years will be like: Vital, uncompromising, unafraid. And it's that inspirational horsepower that keeps the story of Burt Munro revving.