After receiving a sweepstakes letter in the mail, a cantankerous father thinks he's struck it rich, and wrangles his hapless son into a cross-country road trip across the heartland of America to claim their fortune.

Woody (Bruce Dern) has received a junk-mail flyer appearing to promise him a lottery payout of $1m. Woody doesn't trust the post so insists on collecting it in person from an office in Lincoln, Nebraska. To David (Will Forte), Woody’s son, it’s clearly a scam but when Woody becomes obsessed with making the journey on foot (his drinking problem rules out getting behind the wheel) David caves in and offers to drive – even if it’s just to humour his dad and spend a little quality time with him. Along the way they encounter an inadvertent family reunion in his nearby hometown of Hawthorne, where some painful family secrets are exhumed.

Without announcing it, or perhaps even entirely intending it, director Alexander Payne has become the king of the contemporary American road movie. Along with films like About Schmidt and Sideways, Nebraska restated the themes of those earlier journeys – one of male sadness and disappointment with life, tempered with a sweeter, subsequent realisation that such vanities are, ulitmately, irrelevant.

---