Four stars. Rating: R, for profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.9.13
Matt Damon hasn’t written many scripts since 1997’s Good Will Hunting, his Academy Award-winning debut effort with Ben Affleck. His prudence is understandable; where does one go, from up?
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| Hoping to undo the doubts raised by a local farmer who warns that fracking is anything but a safe means of obtaining "clean" natural gas, Steve Butler (Matt Damon) takes the microphone during a McKinley town meeting. Unfortunately, his usual smooth patter will fail him a bit here, leading to a divided community ... and displeasure on the part of Steve's corporate bosses. |
Good Will Hunting was directed by Gus Van Sant; no
surprise, then, that they collaborated on Damon’s next script, 2002’s
little-seen (with good cause) Gerry.
Perhaps chastened by that
experience, Damon put his word processor in the closet for a decade, while
crafting an impressive acting career as both action hero — the Bourne series —
and overall international film star.
But writers never quit; telling
stories is in their blood. No doubt Damon was waiting for just the right property,
and he certainly got it with Promised
Land. Once again under Van Sant’s capable guidance, this captivating drama
gets its juice from well-crafted characters, tart dialogue, a solid ensemble
cast and a hot-button scenario ripped from real-world headlines.
Damon shares scripting duties
with John Krasinski, a rising film star making good on the promise he has shown
for so many years, on television’s The
Office. Krasinski isn’t known as a writer — unless once includes 2009’s
best-forgotten Brief Interviews with
Hideous Men — but he certainly rises to the occasion here. He and Damon
have deftly adapted a story by Dave Eggers, who burst on the scene a few years
ago, with scripts for Away We Go and Where the Wild Things Are.
Good screenplays get their power from
many elements. It’s not enough to craft piquant one-liners; they must be true
to a well constructed plot. (They also must be delivered well by actors who
understand how to maximize the impact of crisply timed dialogue, and that’s
where we credit Van Sant.) The characters themselves must be interesting, efficiently
sketched and cleverly integrated with all the other players on stage. We must
care about them, either as good guys or bad guys.
Most of all, they must change —
mature, regress, whatever — as a result of what happens to them.
A tall order all around.
Factor in a desire to be relevant
— to indict a topic of the day — and most writers fail to juggle all those
fragile eggs.
Damon and Krasinski, in welcome
contrast, never err. Even casual exchanges of dialogue have consequences; watch
for the payoff on a passing reference to a little girl selling lemonade outside
a high school gymnasium. Goodness, it could be argued that she carries the
moral weight of the entire film. That
is sharp scripting.
