Promised Land: so good until the corny ending

Promised Land is an engaging drama about the exploitation of natural gas in rural America –  until the corny ending.  Matt Damon and Frances McDormand play a team of corporate road warriors who persuade farmers to lease their land for the fracking.  Based on the experience of his own hometown, the Damon character believes that the American rural way of life has become an unsustainable myth, that small farming communities are doomed without the cash from natural gas.  He believes that he is suckering them into their own salvation.

It’s an “issue movie”of the kind that I often dislike. My day job is in   public policy, and I see more nuance and tradeoffs than usually make it into these movies, which are often too “black hat/white hat” for my taste.  Promised Land doesn’t fall into that trap because Damon’s character and because the locals are not uniformly saintly.  Most of the struggling farmers can’t sign their leases fast enough.  Ken Strunk plays an elected official right out of Mark Twain’s Hadleyburg.  Lucas Black plays a guy who is a puddle of bad choices waiting to be made.  Scoot McNairy (Argo) plays an inarticulate man of firm principles; he’s right, but he doesn’t know why.

Director Gus Van Sant (Good Will Hunting, Elephant, Paranoid Park, Milk) creates a rural community that is completely authentic without using clichés.   Damon is outstanding.  McDormand, John Krasinski, a frisky Rosemarie DeWitt (Rachel Getting Married, Your Sister’s Sister) and Hal Holbrook are all reliably excellent.

Unfortunately, after navigating through the conflicting values, difficult tradeoffs and shades of gray that are found in real life, the movie takes the easy way out – an improbable ending that is happy for all.  Too bad – a little cynicism would have gone a long way here.

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