Dir: Roger Donaldson
2005
****
The World's Fastest Indian is the epitome of what is known as The feelgood movie and for added feelgoodliness, it's based on a true story. Burt Munro was something of a local celebrity in his home City of Invercargill, New Zealand. Burt spent near 25 years tinkering with his Indian Scout Motorcycle to make it run at world record breaking speeds. Burt, a speedway racer in his day, always dreamed of breaking the speed record at the famous Slat flats at Bonneville speedway and The World's Fastest Indian is the almost true story of how he did just that. Certain facts are changed for the film, I'm not really sure why though as most of these fact neither add nor take anything important from the film. It is mentioned that Burt's twin Brother died when they were young when a tree fell on him. The truth is that Burt's older Brother died by a falling tree and his twin Sister died during childbirth. This tinkering with the truth bothers me somewhat. On one hand it may have been a mistake, on the other it might have been changed for dramatic purposes, neither are a good thing in my opinion. However, Burt's actual children, who are never mentioned in the film, have since said that Anthony Hopkin's performance was spot on and the film tells all the important parts of the story and I believe they are right. This is one of the few times I will admit that changing certain aspects of Burt's story worked, in truth, all of it is true, it just didn't necessarily happen in that order. 'Feelgood' films can often be emotionally manipulative, The World's Fastest Indian never is, instead, it relies on showing our lead character for what he was and why people loved him.
