The World's Fastest Indian

Burt Munro, living in Invercargill in New Zealand, has spent decades reworking a 1920 Indian Scout in his own shed. He wants to run it at the Bonneville salt flats in Utah. He has a heart attack, ignores his doctor, takes a cargo ship to Los Angeles and sets off. What he meets is bureaucracy and people who will not take him seriously. Roger Donaldson directed. Anthony Hopkins plays Munro. It opened in New Zealand on 7 December 2005 and reached the United States on 3 February 2006. Against a 25 million dollar budget it took 18.3 million worldwide, and even so became the highest-grossing local film in New Zealand at the time. Rotten Tomatoes sits at 83 percent from 143 critics, the consensus praising Hopkins's warm and endearing portrayal of an age-defying thrill seeker. Metacritic sits at 68. A historical note: the film compresses several of Munro's actual trips to Bonneville into one journey. The real Munro also never took the 201 mph record the film implies, though he did reach 205.67 mph on an incomplete run. Who it is for: viewers who like one-man obsessions and road films about old men. Who it is not for: anyone expecting motorcycle racing action. The film is almost entirely travel and preparation.