Sir Anthony Hopkins goes native!

Rating: 7/10 (10 October 2006)

Look back over the career of Anthony Hopkins in IMDb and marvel at the list of characters he has portrayed - such famous and infamous, real and fictional personalities as (in no particular order) Quasimodo, Richard Nixon, Adolf Hitler, Professor van Helsing, Abel Magwitch, Guy Burgess and of course, Hannibal Lecter. There are literally countless others too. Is it any wonder that he is in the pantheon of character actors? In this film, Hopkins portrays another actual person, Burt Munro, an eccentric New Zealand mechanic with a dream to race his Indian motorcycle on the salt flats of Bonneville in Utah, USA.
Director Roger Donaldson takes his audience from sleepy Invercargill at the very south of New Zealand to Speed Week at Bonneville, where everybody and his Indian has arrived to see if they can set some sort of speed record. The early part of the journey is a little too slow for my liking, watching a 68 year-old Burt tangle with bikie gangs, transvestites, thieves and even a couple of sexual conquests thrown in for good measure.
The real action starts when Burt arrives in Bonneville. He is penniless, has no support team and nowhere to stay. His bike was made in the 1920s and is the laughing-stock of the speed freaks who have gathered there. He hasn't even pre-registered to race his cycle, and the race officials want to turn him away.
Through the film, Hopkins develops an amiable, persistent, inventive elderly larrikin from Down Under as Burt Munro. He provides a more than passable Southland Kiwi accent, and a genuine wide-eyed wonderment at eventually finding himself at Bonneville, the place he has been dreaming of for 25 years.
The script has some schmaltzy but heart-warming moments, as well as quirky humour which mainly revolves around Burt's eccentricities (watch out for him trimming his toenails with an angle-grinder) and predictable racing action.
The main character is thoughtfully drawn by Hopkins, and while it may not become his greatest ever accomplishment, there is more than enough in this film to enjoy.