by CHRIS BARRY

By all accounts, this should be a terrible movie. Have you ever seen the films Cocktail, Cadillac Man or, oh, here’s a really good one, Species? Well, I’ve seen ’em all and believe me, each one of these losers serves as the kind of crapola which almost justifies one’s unrelenting hatred for Hollywood, mankind and popular culture in general. And what do these annoying films have in common? Yup, director Roger Donaldson.

I dunno, maybe it’s because I’m coming off my medication or something, but Donaldson’s latest, The World’s Fastest Indian, struck me as that rarest of rare breeds; a feel-good movie of sorts that actually leaves you feeling kind of good instead of making you want to hit somebody—ideally someone involved in the production. There’s so much room for a hack like Donaldson to go wrong here. The fact he doesn’t has left me reconsidering my position on the possibility of divine intervention—not to mention my critical faculties.

Much of the credit for making The World’s Fastest Indian actually enjoyable goes to Anthony Hopkins, pretentious ol’ git that he is, who nevertheless demonstrates yet again why he’s so regularly hailed as one of the finest actors in the biz. The year is 1963 and Hopkins plays Burt Munro, an eccentric New Zealander closing in on the end of his days and whose life long dream is to break the land speed record on the back of his 1920 Indian Twin Scout Motorcycle. In order to do so he has to get his saggy old ass over to America to race against a bunch of cocky young whippersnappers at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, and neither endeavour is going to be easy.

Along the way he beds a few ladies, befriends a Hollywood transvestite, a soldier on leave from Vietnam, a couple Native Americans and charms one and all with his good nature and simple yet infinitely wise approach to life. See what I mean? Everything is set up for this film to suck royally. But hey, by some miracle, it honestly doesn’t. Divine intervention, man—read up on it.

The World’s Fastest Indian opens Friday, March 31

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