I have no seen eight movies in the last 2 1/2 weeks and there is at least one more I want to see before Zero Dark Thirty is released nationally on January 11. Promised Land won’t be released nationally until this Friday so here is your advance review [unless you live in L.A., New York or (as they say) selected cities):
Promised Land (Matt Damon, John Krasinski, Frances McDormand, Rosemarie DeWitt, Hal Holbrook) – Can lightning strike again? Remember: Matt Damon and a friend write a screenplay and get Gus Van Sant to direct and Danny Elfman to write the music in what they hope to be an Oscar-worthy movie? The year was 1997 and the film turned out to be Good Will Hunting. Damon and his buddy, Ben Affleck, starred and won an Oscar for Best Screenplay as did Robin Williams as Supporting Actor. Hunting was also nominated for seven other Oscars, including Best Director and Best Movie (it lost to Titanic).
Fifteen years later, affable actor John Krasinski (of TV’s The Office as well as Leathernecks and It’s Complicated) sought out Damon to collaborate on a script based on a story by Dave Eggers. Damon, who starred in The Adjustment Bureau with Krasinski’s wife, Emily Blount, agreed. He also intended to direct but, instead, turned it over to Van Sant along with a score by Elfman. That script turned out to be Promised Land.
So is the film another Good Will Hunting? The short answer is no. The longer answer is that there are plenty of similarities between the two films. They are both character studies about an intriguing man. They both have a deeper message. And both were low-budget flicks with Hunting only costing $10 million (it grossed $138 million) and Promised Land running about $15 million.
The comparisons pretty much stop there. Promised Land is preachy; Hunting uplifting. Land is predictable; Hunting had us guessing until the very end. The relationships in Promised Land only run skin-deep while the friendships in Hunting drive the film just as the Williams/Stellan Skarsgard tussle provides incredible tension.
Promised Land, shot in and around my hometown of Pittsburgh (just as the most recent Batman movie and Jack Reacher were), centers on a small town rich in underground shale and, thus, natural gas. Damon’s character, Steve Butler, is a rising star for the energy company trying to get the locals to sign away their drilling rights. Four-time Oscar nominee Frances McDormand (she won for Fargo) plays Sue, Butler’s co-worker and partner. They run into a bit of resistance in the form of an octogenarian Frank Yates (Hal Holbrook), a science teacher and former Boeing executive who has studied up on “fracking,” the process by which natural energy is released by drilling through shale. Yes, this is indeed a “fracking” movie.
Enter Dustin Noble (Krasinski), an environmentalist who wants to help Yates and his like-minded townsfolk. Noble endears himself to the locals and even makes a play for a woman, Alice (Rosemarie DeWitt of Mad Men who also played Affleck’s wife in the movie, The Company Men), to whom Butler is attracted. As trite as this is, the film then loses its way when it becomes a rant against the big, bad energy company. It all leads up to a vote of the town on whether to allow drilling.
I really wanted to love this film because Damon is such a wonderful talent and seemingly so grounded as an individual and family man. So I was disappointed in the lack of depth of this story and the uneven script. Van Sant did about all he could with what he was handed when Damon bowed out as director due to his busy schedule. And frankly, it felt like Damon also bowed out of his meticulous involvement in the script though his acting performance is first-rate as always. McDormand and Krasinski are good, too, as is the always reliable, 87-year-old Holbrook. Promised Land is not an Oscar-caliber film and may be ignored in the Best Picture category. It is, however, well worth your time and money if you aren’t expecting too much.