Where: Area theaters.

When: Opens today.

Rating: PG-13 for brief language, drug use and a sexual reference.

Running time: 127 minutes.

Bottom line: An eccentric racer takes his motorcycle to the Bonneville Salt Flats in an adventure propelled by the energy of its star, Anthony Hopkins.

In 1963, an eccentric New Zealander named Burt Munro hopped a steamer to America and drove from California to Utah's Bonneville Salt Flats intent on racing his modified 1920 Indian Scout motorcycle as fast as he possibly could.

Munro made this journey largely by pluck and the good will of strangers he met along the way. At least, that's the way the story is told in "The World's Fastest Indian," an adventure tale that itself gets by largely on pluck and the good will the audience invests in Munro and the actor who plays him, Anthony Hopkins.

Hopkins plays Munro as something of a nutter, a hermit who thinks nothing of asking a neighbor boy (Aaron Murphy) to get his mum's carving knife so Munro can slice some rubber off his motorcycle's tires. When Munro has a bout of angina, his friends pass the hat to pay for his passage to America - to fulfill his lifelong dream of racing at Bonneville Salt Flats.

Half of the movie involves Munro getting from L.A. to Utah (though most of the American footage was shot in Utah - that Sunset Strip motel is actually on North Temple). Munro almost never meets someone he doesn't like, and everyone takes a liking to him, too. His newfound friends include a transvestite motel clerk (Chris Williams), a fast-talking car dealer (Paul Rodriguez) and a charming widow in the desert (Diane Ladd).

Writer-director Roger Donaldson ("No Way Out," "Thirteen Days"), a New Zealander like Munro, lets the road-trip portion of Munro's story poke along, sometimes repetitively. But when Munro gets to the Salt Flats, the combination of that blinding-white expanse and Hopkins' confident gaze is as big an adrenaline rush as Munro's eventual time trial.

Hopkins' performance, more sprightly and less self-conscious than you would expect from a 68-year-old actor with a knighthood, embodies Munro's bubbly enthusiasm for speed. It's Hopkins' unbridled energy, not gasoline, that fuels "The World's Fastest Indian" into overdrive.

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Contact Sean P. Means at movies@sltrib.com or 801-257-8602. Send comments about this review to livingeditor@sltrib.com.