For anyone who disdains NASCAR culture and isn't interested in the sound of motors revving, the idea of sitting through a film about a man who breaks a land-speed record on a souped-up motorcycle is as inviting as driving a nail into your skull. Add to the fact that such tales are usually told as a little-man-beating-the-odds saga, complete with a "feel-good" ending, and you have, basically, a shot evening.

Yet somehow, New Zealander writer-director Roger Donaldson pulls it off with The World's Fastest Indian, a cinematic take on the life of Burt Munro, who took his own wildly improbable motorcycle to the desert of Utah and set a new speed limit in the 1960s.

Yes, Munro is the proverbial "little guy," and the ending does have a heartwarming glow to it. And yet this is a beautifully crafted and very human tale of an old codger overcoming the odds. The sentiment is never cloying, and even for those of us opposed to the internal combustion engine, one walks away with an appreciation for Munro's passion without having to share it.

This is primarily achieved through a thoughtful, energetic performance from Sir Anthony Hopkins as Munro. We first discover him puttering about in his shed/house in New Zealand, concocting new ways to embellish his prized motorcycle, an Indian Scout, into one of the world's fastest vehicles. His dream is to go to America, specifically to the Bonneville Salt Flats in the desert Southwest to test his machine on "holy ground," where various world records have already been reached.

The actual testing of his contraption takes up the last 45 minutes of the film. Before that, Donaldson sets Munro on a picaresque heroic quest for Bonneville via working his passage on a tramp steamer, surviving his first night in America in a very insalubrious motel off Sunset Boulevard, and finding a moment of passion with a lonely widow living in the middle of the Mojave before reaching his destination.

As exciting as Donaldson finally makes Munro's triumph, it is really Burt's earlier adventures that set the tone for this wonderful small movie. With old Hollywood PR fantasies flashing through his mind, Munro insists on spending his first night in Tinseltown. A taxi dumps him at an hourly rate motel run by a vespine transvestite named Tina Washington (Chris Williams). The two become an unlikely pair of friends. And Munro, who isn't bothered in the least by Tina's true gender, gallantly treats her in a style befitting a lady. Tina isn't the only one charmed.

Making his way across the vast still of the American desert, Munro hooks up with a Native American, a young soldier on leave from Vietnam, and the lonely, love-starved Ada (the great Diane Ladd), who gives Burt a night to remember in her own ramshackle house.

When Munro finally reaches Bonneville, he recites the names of past speed masters and their vehicles to the young soldier who has joined him. It's a strangely powerful moment, as this recitation of names becomes a monument to other holy fools like Burt, who have set out to pit breakable human bodies against the law of speed.

Once Munro's fellow racers show up, the film narrows its focus on Munro's preparations to test his mettle on the Salt Flats. This little man from Down Under will, of course, suffer vicissitudes, but will stand at the end to prove to all naysayers that the impossible is quite possible.

The World's Fastest Indian isn't the fastest film, and there are definitely a few superfluous scenes that Donaldson could have whittled away that would have given his project the compactness of Munro's own speed cart. One scene in an American bar does nothing to further the plot, and only seems to exist to remind us how isolated many Americans are from the rest of the world (something every news report brings to our attention daily, free of charge).