New Delhi, Oct. 17 -- "I don't speak Celsius."

Tom Cruise lays down the scorn in Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritu's Digger. As with most things in that film, the line is double-edged. Speaking as shovel-slinging oilman Digger Rockwell, Cruise's words mine the cliched American disdain for the metric system, but there's more to it. This is an earth-penetrating tycoon who dismisses facts he doesn't like. The reason Digger doesn't care for a word most of the world uses is because he doesn't care how much of their climate he's changing, as long as he gets "a billion barrels a day."

By the time you read this, the underrated Digger may be out of most theatres. This column, a personal celebration of an ambitious masterwork, will not attempt to ...