One of the possibly sneak-attack surprises lingering at the end of this year's fall movie season is Promised Land, the movie that reunites Gus van Sant and Matt Damon for a story that could be even more emotionally fulfilling and heartwarming than Good Will Hunting. Matt Damon stars as a representative of a natural gas drilling company who arrives in a depressed small town with promises of riches, only to come up against a local environmental activist (John Krasinski) who sees danger in them thar hills. You can see how the drama unfolds from there in the first trailer, which debuted online today. You can watch it below.
See it in HD at Apple.
Without putting the cart before the horse here, everything about this looks fantastic. Like Good Will Hunting or Milk, Promised Land looks like the kind of story that could be treacly or insufferable in the wrong hands; luckily van Sant is an expert at navigating that kind of terrain and wringing a good story out of it, and he's got a dynamite cast in place to help him get there. In addition to Damon and Krasinski-- two of the most inherently likable actors working today-- they've got Rachel Getting Married's Rosemarie DeWitt, recent Oscar nominee Hal Holbrook, and Frances McDormand, who we all know is capable of pretty much anything. Add all that to the very topical and important issue of tracking, and you've got a lot of elements to make not just a good movie, but a valuable one.
Promised Land is currently set for release on on December 28, but if it's as good as it seems, you can count on people getting a look at it sooner and talking it up so that it has a place in the awards race. Let us know in the comments if you're looking forward to this one as much as I am.
