Things get perhaps a bit zippy and drippy and cliched at the end of this first trailer for Gus Van Sant’s Promised Land, but there’s just so much good stuff before all that upbeat music and hackneyed professions of maybe-wonder to sink it. Originally slated as Matt Damon’s directorial debut, Promised Land does still feature Damon in front of the camera and behind its script, as he’s co-written this one with co-star John Krasinksi (of note, this is the sort of pairing dreams are made of), who first conceived of its story with author Dave Eggers before Matty and Johnnycakes (as we like to refer to them) penned the script.
Details have been slim about the project, but we have known that it would center on “a salesman [who] experiences life-changing events after arriving in a small town” and that it would possibly involve fracking. It looks like both those nuggets have proven to be true, as Promised Land looks like a mix of Erin Brockovich and Michael Clayton, set in a small town that Damon’s natural gas conglomerate is trying to convince to sell off their drilling rights. Things get messy when some of the townspeople start to revolt against ol’ smoothy Damon and his company, and that crisis isn’t helped by a potential love triangle that also involves Krasinski and the lovely Rosemarie DeWitt. Take a look:
Pretty great, right? Promised Land will open on December 28 in limited release, with expansion following in January. [Apple]