★★★★☆
The film genre known as “old codger doling out life lessons while travelling” has become well established — see The Last Bus, The Leisure Seeker and The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. But it was relatively untouched when David Lynch abandoned surrealism in 1999 to make this, his most traditional and, well, straight movie.
Based on a true story, it describes the journey of the sweetly sympathetic Alvin Straight (79-year-old Richard Farnsworth), a war veteran who travels the 240 miles from Iowa to Wisconsin on a ride-on lawnmower to visit his ailing brother, played by Harry Dean Stanton.
Farnsworth, who was terminally ill with cancer while shooting, brings a glassy-eyed dignity to the role, while the movie as a whole is an
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