Build a movie plot around this: Who races past Alvin? A huge group of RAGBRAI cyclists race past him.
Laurens, Iowa, 1994. Alvin Straight (Richard Farnsworth) is a 73-year-old frail old man who falls in his kitchen one day and waits for help from his slow-witted daughter Rose (Sissy Spacek). She takes him to a doctor, from whom Alvin will heed no advice despite his many ailments (Alvin is a World War II veteran who is a diabetic and former alcoholic who continues to smoke cigars and is in the middle stages of emphysema). His only solution for his painful walking problems is to use two canes.One night during a raging thunderstorm, Alvin gets news informing him that his 75-year-old estranged brother Lyle (Harry Dean Stanton) has suffered a stroke. The next day on the phone with a relative, Rose says that Alvin and Lyle had a dispute ten years earlier and they have not spoken ever since.Determined to see his brother after all that time, Alvin decides to visit him. The trouble is that Lyle lives 370 miles away in Mount Zion, Wisconsin, and Alvin is legally unable to drive a car due to his bad health and poor eyesight. To make matters worse, Rose cannot drive either and no buses go to Mount Zion. Undaunted, Alvin hatches a plan: he will drive his Rehd lawn mower all the way.Alvin gathers some supplies, including a clapboard trailer that he hitches to the mower, and prepares for his long journey. Rose is worried about him, but the night before he departs, he tells her to look up into the sky at the stars.Some of Alvin's old friends warn him on the way out of town that his journey is foolhardy, but he continues on, moving a few miles an hour for only a few hours until his tractor breaks down outside town. He and his tractor get towed back home, where he promptly puts the Rehd rider out of its misery with a shotgun blast. Reunited with his daughter, Alvin's determination knows no bounds. At the John Deere farm equipment dealer, he purchases a newer replacement lawn tractor from a salesman (Everett McGill) who is generous but describes Alvin as being a smart man, "until now."On September 5, Alvin sets off once more...