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83Urgent, heartfelt, and not-quite-as-predictable-as-you-think environmental rabble-rouser.
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80Though the film eventually caves to sentiment and stereotype, its alert performances and muted rhythms offer much to enjoy in the interim.
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80Krasinki's soft-sell script, lets the movie's ideas get absorbed without grandstanding or pretension. Its issues go down with a smile and common sense, which turns out to be exactly the right formula.
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75Van Sant moves easily from dreamy, impressionistic narratives to conventional, less stylized storytelling, and he does the latter job well in Promised Land.
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75The characters drive this story, not ideology. Damon and McDormand are terrific as co-workers seeking the same goal, though they see their work from different points of view.
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75Promised Land is an involving and timely tale that explores the changing nature and complex challenges of rural life.
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75Promised Land is a fine place to start appreciating Matt Damon, who always makes it seem as if everybody else is acting and he's just going through the movie being natural.
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75The rhetorically stacked deck, and some unconvincing third-act plot twists, get in the way of this movie's efforts to reach the cinematic promised land of true greatness.
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75Director Gus Van Sant finds the human side of a knotty issue. No polemics. Just the face of a new America in crisis.
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67The film has lots of small moments that make it a worthy effort.
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67Promised Land is more effective as an anti-fracking screed than as a drama. Damon has his low-key charisma and Van Sant captures the enraged anomie of the community, but, except for one big plot twist, everything in this film is telegraphed from the first frame.
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67Promised Land can't help but preach its cause in obvious ways that continually hold back an otherwise well-acted, swiftly paced drama.
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63Because he's the protagonist of the movie and played by the likable Matt Damon, we keep an open mind, but Promised Land is morally ambiguous to a fault.
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63It's a fine line between interesting characters and "Northern Exposure" quirk, but the movie mostly stays on the right side of it.
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60The ultimate goal of a film like this, of course, is to change minds. As compelling a case as it builds, Promised Land isn't quite persuasive enough to be able to promise to do that.
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60Promised Land presents its environmental concerns in a clear, upfront manner but hits some narrative and character bumps in the second half that weaken the impact of this fundamentally gentle, sympathetic work.
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50Like so many earnestly conceived morality tales, Promised Land is built around a man's quandaries. Any actor less skilled and sympathetic than Damon might have betrayed the material into obviousness. [14 Jan. 2013, p.78]
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50Promised Land is a low-budget effort, far too awkward and contrived a drama to change many hearts and minds.
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50There's also reason to worry when a simplistic movie like this one takes on an issue of overarching importance to the nation's future. The challenges presented by fracking are immense, and Capra-esque nostalgia isn't helpful.
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50Despite their Everyman appeal, Damon and Krasinski don't create much by way of emotional investment, instead becoming mirror images of their most mild-mannered, white-bread selves.
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50Unfortunately, much of what's good about Promised Land is easily forgotten as a result of the preachy, impossible-to-swallow final 15 minutes in which the protagonist is subjected to character assassination, the screenplay turns into a sermon, and narrative intelligence is discarded in favor of a message.
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50Promised Land is a frustrating film to watch. It should be better than this, smarter than this.
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50It's got a strong cast and an intriguing premise that has the added bonus of real-world relevance. But, good intentions and good work aside, the film flounders before it reaches its conclusion.
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50An earnest attempt, sometimes effective, sometimes clumsy, to dramatize the central arguments about fracking and its impact.
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50More an argument than a fully fleshed-out drama ... The script is unconvincing; two key narrative twists, one related to the other, are deeply hokey.
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50Van Sant knows how to display the common touch, but the movie is a hard sell whose ending is never in doubt.
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50No one seems to recognize the irony of making a film about corporate rigging that is itself outrageously rigged.
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50By manipulating their story to advance the cynical notion that you really can't trust anyone, the filmmakers inadvertently beg the question why their own motives should be so above suspicion.
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50It's Middle America vs. big bad corporate America, and while the (not so) "bad guy" predictably finds salvation in salt-of-the-earth people, Promised Land often leaves a sour taste in your mouth.
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Dec 31, 201240It collapses on all fronts, delivering hot-button platitudes and just-add-water character development.
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40Yet worst of all is the way the film ultimately reveals its humanistic setup as a lazy pretext to redeem Damon's big-business apologist through the healing power of nature. He's not the only one who should be put out to pasture.
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40Left-wingers in the mainstream media - by which I mean me - are supposed to lap up a movie that plays to our farm-loving, tree-hugging prejudices. But even we know that well-meaning does not automatically equal good movie. Some organic life is needed. And the only crop Promised Land harvests is Capra Corn.
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38Much has been made of the fact that Promised Land was partly funded by the enemies of our domestic gas industry - the foreign oil nabobs in the United Arab Emirates. But the film gets so cheesy that I suspect it was also secretly funded by Velveeta.
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38Gus Van Sant's new film offends for how it views the struggles of the landowners at the heart of its story as subservient to their oppressor's triumph of the spirit.