Alvin Straight (RICHARD FARNSWORTH) was 73 when he got the call about his brother.

Alvin couldn't see well enough to hold a driver's license. He walked only with the support of two canes. He didn't much care for anybody else helping him out. But when he got the call that his brother Lyle (HARRY DEAN STANTON) -- separated from him by hundreds of miles and a decade of proud silence-had suffered a stroke, Alvin knew he had to reach him.

So, with little money but abundant determination, he climbed on his lawnmower and set out.

From two-time Oscar-nominated director David Lynch ("Blue Velvet," "The Elephant Man") comes a lyrical portrait of this real man's journey across America's Heartland. Filmed along the route that the actual Alvin Straight traversed in 1994 from Laurens, Iowa to Mt. Zion, Wisconsin, "The Straight Story" chronicles Alvin's patient odyssey and those he meets along the way. When not rolling along at five miles an hour aboard his '66 John Deere, Alvin encounters a number of strangers, from a teenage runaway to a fellow World War II veteran. By sharing his life's earned wisdom with simple stories, Alvin has a profound impact on the characters that color his pilgrimage.

Menaced by enormous, rumbling 18-wheelers, lapped by bicycle marathoners and sheltered by abandoned barns, Alvin proceeds steadfastly along on the shoulders of snaking roads toward a hopeful and long-deferred reunion with a brother whose fate he doesn't know.

Alvin is portrayed by Richard Farnsworth in a poignant, delicate performance that caps a long and prolific career in Hollywood, from decades serving as a stuntman for directors like Cecil B. DeMille, Stanley Kubrick, John Ford, Howard Hawks and Sam Peckinpah, through his later years as an actor, including his Oscar-nominated role in "Comes a Horseman" and acclaimed work in "The Grey Fox." The film also stars Academy Award-winner Sissy Spacek as Alvin's daughter, Rose, and Harry Dean Stanton.

MOVIE REVIEW

Who knew a G-rated movie could be so good? The Straight Story is a Disney drama comedy that features no cartoon characters and no children whatsoever. It stars Richard Farnsworth and Sissy Spacek, and that's all you need to know.
Read our Straight Story. The movie review »