Promised Land

Gus Van Sant has tackled a number of political and social issues in his movies. "Promised Land" looks at the issue of hydraulic fracturing, commonly called fracking. Matt Damon plays an executive from an energy company trying to convince a town to allow the process in their vicinity. Meanwhile, an environmentalist tries to convince people otherwise.

I have liked most of Van Sant's movies, and it's good that this movie is addressing a process that has devastated entire regions. Indeed, the fracking industry criticized the movie's depiction of the process as destructive (surprise, surprise). Unfortunately, what happens at the end does not seem realistic. It reminded me of what happens in Bill Forsyth's "Local Hero". Other than that the movie is a perceptive character study of Damon's amoral exec, the sort of man who's totally in it for the money. Mostly a good movie, understanding that what happens at the end probably wouldn't happen in real life.