Film Review: Promised Land

Director: Gus Van Sant

The process of hydraulic fracturing, colloquially known as fracking, is a huge issue between natural gas companies and environmentalists who analyse the impact to the land where this process takes place. It's a topic that has been discussed in the UK with potential sites being found along with South Wales coast and the North West coast running from Liverpool up into Cumbria, but in Middle America it is an exponentially bigger issue.

With towns having few jobs with major manufacturing leaving town for cheaper labour abroad the gas companies are moving in to buy the land for fracking whilst playing down the risks to the local environment. This issue has mainly just been dealt with in documentary films up to this point but Matt Damon and John Krasinski have come together and written the screenplay for this film that they both star in. Damon plays Steve Butler whose job is to purchase land for fracking for a gas company at as cheaper price as possible with his partner Sue (Frances McDormand). They run into a few town members who are against it and after a vote is decided upon they soon have to battle environmentalist Dustin Noble (Krasinski) whose determined to persuade the townspeople to say no.

Sue and Steve

*possible spoilers*
An intriguing topic is reasonably well dealt with, as a film it leaves a lot of questions to ponder about what you would do if you were struggling financially against selling your potential future business as a farmer etc? It's certainly not an easy issue to decide one way or the other and this film does well to bring this topic to the attention of the greater public. The plot is slightly formulaic as they build towards the vote to decide whether drilling will happen in this un-named mid-American town with the usual potential love story thrown into the mix.

The acting is clearly good with the likes of Damon, McDormand and Krasinski being well experienced in this sort of role, the only concern being McDormand playing a role very similar to many previous roles like she's had with the Coen Brothers. As the film works its way towards its conclusion a clever little twist leaves you enthralled as you wait to see what the final outcome will be only for it to be an incredibly cliché and 'Hollywood' type ending which left me furious, it was a total waste of an opportunity on such a decent film and great plot topic. To be honest my advice is that if you are going to watch it skip the last ten mins and move on.

1.5/4 Harsh rating but dreadful ending leaves a very sour taste