The Prohibition-era Smoky Mountains hid whiskey stills. Now they hide crops of skunkweed, guarded by bear traps. Moonshine’s out, marijuana’s in—give the people what they want. Nothing changes in the hollows.
In Appalachia USA, the Civil War burned out long ago, but certain pockets of the region are still smoking with resentment. Why? Because “landscape is destiny,” says the voiceover, early in the haunting but slow-moving and ultimately tedious indie film “The World Made Straight.”
It’s the 1970s, in North Carolina hill country. High school dropout Travis Shelton (Jeremy Irvine) works at the local supermarket. He gives away merchandise to old folks with no money, and quits when the manager lectures him about it.
A hundred years before, right down the road near the creek in fact, the Candler family militia executed a child-soldier from the Shelton family—blasted his little spectacles off. Time buried his glasses in the grass, but the deed still festers in the present day.
Anyway, Travis’s dad hears about the supermarket situation, hollers some emasculating shame, and away Travis goes. Survival time. He chops a big marijuana plant out of a local drug dealer’s “sea of green.” Sells it for 50 bucks to another dealer.
This second dealer, Winchester-toting Leonard (Noah Wyle), is a former schoolteacher whose trailer hides interesting stuff: an 1859 diary, and a stunner of a “girlfriend” in the bedroom. Stunning, that is, until she puts in her false teeth. Travis and Leonard have a meeting of the minds, of sorts. They share similar interests in history.
So back young Travis goes (after more face-slapping humiliation from dad) to filch another filament of Kind Bud. But soon he’s passed out from the pain of bear-trap jaws biting through his leather boot. Courtesy of ruthless top-dog grower-dealer Carlton (Steve Earle), a black-bearded bad dude with a meaner sidekick (Marcus Hester) whose pot field Travis looted.
They put Travis in their El Camino, dump him in front of a hospital, and burn rubber.
After healing up, Travis, with no place to go, starts rooming with Leonard and his rent-a-girlfriend Dena (Minka Kelly). A mentoring begins. Travis learns local history. And eludes Dena’s advances. Dena’s bored of Leonard, finds him pathetic.
They explore fields and streams with a metal detector and, surprise, surprise, finally dig up little David Shelton’s glasses. They feel haunted.
