REVIEW - PROMISED LAND

A deceptive slice of American pie, with a sickly, mass-produced demeanour, and a virtuous filling. It's dressed up like a trite old heartwarmer, but the liberal sincerity of the script bleeds through the glossiness. It infects the film around it, which is to say that it makes a flat, insipid film go sour and silly. You can't kill a film that's dead on arrival. Gus van Sant turns hired hand to direct this film, originally intended to be star and co-writer Matt Damon's debut behind the camera, and does so passionlessly, in a sedated monotone which he adopts when he wants to go Hollywood - I find the schizophrenia of his career choices less bothersome than the disparity of quality in his output. There's no evident attempt to enliven the film, although the occasional amble in the countryside is to some people's tastes. Damon and the trustworthy Frances McDormand play roles so determinedly ordinary that they don't convince - the right choice to draft these characters as good souls in nasty jobs, but both seem too nice to be comfortable making a living out of manipulating honest people trying to make a living. There are some unexpected developments in the plot in what feels like the beginning of the third act, forcing the film to a sputtering halt, and goodness only knows how gullible you'll have to be to buy into them. The blandness with which the generic female characters are depicted is also disheartening. A shame that this is such a cack-handed, dreary film, alternately cornball and watery polemic, as it has a fair point to make, even if Damon and John Krasinski's ardency disables them from adequately grasping the basic truths on the other side of the argument too. All involved have seen, and will see, better days, and you've seen better films.