“A Big Tease”

“Hotshots” looks at a movie!

Promised Land is a film about the controversial subject of hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” in which an oil and gas company drills into the ground and pumps liquid chemicals into the earth in order to release the oil and natural gas that is trapped in the rocks below the surface.

Promised Land

Matt Damon plays Steve Butler, and he and his partner, Sue, played by Frances McDormand, work for one such company, and their job is to visit the property owners in a small community and purchase the drilling rights on their land so that the company can drill there.

Because of the economy, the property owners, many of whom are farmers, are struggling, and by buying those leases starting at $2,000 an acre, Steve says, “I’m not selling them natural gas; I’m selling them the only way they have to get out.”

Steve and Sue are the best team the company has, having closed out more towns than the team behind them by triple digits, but Steve is under additional pressure for their current assignment, because if he does well, he could get a promotion to a job in the company’s New York City headquarters.

So, we see Steve and Sue come into town, buy the clothes they believe will help the property owners identify with them, and go out on their sales calls.

They also have to overcome the stories about fracking causing some people to be able to light their drinking water on fire and causing the property owners to become sick.

Steve’s argument that fracking is far from a perfect process isn’t enough to refute those stories, and he also has to fight the arguments from Frank Yates, played by Hal Holbrook, a local resident with enough experience to know what he is talking about when he objects to the owners selling their drilling rights.

However, the biggest obstacle that Steve and Sue have to overcome is Dustin Noble, played by John Krasinski, an environmental activist who shows up in town and says that he is from Nebraska where fracking ruined his home town.

Damon and Krasinski wrote the screenplay for this film, which was directed by Gus Van Sant, and I have to warn you that it has a plot twist which might make you disappointed in it.

Promised Land is a big tease.

I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”