Promised Land review

Matt Damon and director Gus Van Sant clock up their fourth film together with ‘Promised Land’. Their first was 1997’s ‘Good Will Hunting’, co-written by Damon and Ben Affleck, fast-tracking them to lush Hollywood careers and Oscar glory. Damon, briefly, reunited with Van Sant for ‘Finding Forrester’, a film we’d all do well to forget, before going all Samuel Beckett on us in the fascinating exercise in tedium that was 2002’s ‘Gerry’.

Now they’re back for ‘Promised Land’, a film that wants to be so blue-collar, you’d think it was wearing a lumberjack shirt and driving a John Deere tractor. Again, it’s sprung from Damon, this time writing with John Krasinski (best known as Jim Halpert from ‘The Office’). Damon originally intended to make this his directorial debut, until he backed out and handed the reins to Van Sant, who delivers something as conventional as he’s ever likely to produce.

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Set in the fictional rural community of McKinley, Damon plays Steve Butler, a ‘land man’ for natural gas company, Global Crosspower Solutions, who arrives with his no-nonsense colleague Sue (Frances McDormand) to convince locals to lease their land for drilling rights. All seems to be going well, until a town meeting is disrupted by ageing science teacher Frank Yates (Hal Holbrook), who raises the hot-topic of ‘fracking’ – the controversial extraction process that some believe causes environmental contamination.

Backing up these concerns is Dustin Noble (Krasinski), an out-of-town eco-activist who ingratiates himself with the good folk of McKinley, much to the chagrin of Steve, who soon finds ‘Global Go Home’ posters everywhere. Convinced his financial incentives are the only solution, “these people, this town, this life – it is dying,” Steve argues, in one of the film’s more potent reminders of current economic duress. 

The model is Bill Forsythe’s ‘Local Hero’, of course, though Damon and Krasinski’s script lacks the charm of that 1983 minor classic. Here everything feels calculated to the nth degree – not least the love-tussle between Steve and Dustin over Rosemarie DeWitt’s flirtatious teacher. Just like Krasinski’s karaoke version of Springsteen’s ‘Dancing In The Dark’, there’s a lot here that’ll make you cringe.

Drill down then into the heart of ‘Promised Land’ and what do you find? A saintly portrait of Middle America, tinged with golden-hued nostalgia. A Frank Capra-lite character study, in which a soul goes a-searching. “I’m not a bad guy,” Steve repeatedly says, though his arc to prove this – notably via a late-on twist – is hardly convincing. Van Sant keeps things neat, though he never rubber-stamps ‘Promised Land’ with his own distinct vision; here to do a job, he does it competently but does no more than that.

Same goes for his leads. Committed to the cause, Damon and Krasinski are watchable enough, but it’s the veterans that impress. Now 88, Holbrook appears daisy-fresh, while McDormand conveys so much in her few moments – not least with her Skype-only relationship with her teenage son. If only the rest of the film had the poignancy of their scenes.