By Chuck Graham, TucsonStage.com
Shades of “Erin Brockovich,” but with a guy in the title role and a clever twist at the end to discourage any copycat environmentalists who want to try the same tactics at home.
That’s a quick synopsis of “Promised Land,” which doesn’t have anything to do with Israel or anything biblical. Except maybe the part about all the plagues.
Steve Butler (Matt Damon) is making big money working for a large corporation that’s buying up mineral rights in folksy towns where fracking for natural gas has suddenly become a cynical business with lots of profit potential – at least for the mineral rights owner.
Helping Steve erode his ethics and get richer is business partner Sue Thomason (Francis McDormand). Keeping her personal values outside her business values, she doesn’t feel the same moral concern for bilking unsophisticated farmers out of their mineral rights.
She’s just doing her job as best she can.
Coming in on a green horse is hippie-styled environmentalist Dustin Noble (John Krasinski) working hard to convince everyone not to sell any part of their property to Steve.
So the crux of this film directed by Gus Van Sant , on which its Academy Award hopes are hung, is whether or not Damon can deliver on the convictions of a bad man saved by his own good intentions.
Will he see the light before greed blinds him to America’s heartland need for family farms?
All the parts of this puzzle are charming, engaging and appealing. Yet, something doesn’t click into focus. The actors are too slick, the farms look too much like farm equipment calendars…something.
That corny karaoke scene didn’t help, either.
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