Promised Land (2012 film)

Promised Land is a 2012 American drama film directed by Gus Van Sant and starring Matt Damon, John Krasinski, Frances McDormand, and Hal Holbrook. The screenplay is written by Damon and Krasinski based on a story by Dave Eggers. Promised Land follows two corporate salespeople who visit a rural town in an attempt to buy drilling rights from the local residents.

Steve Butler has caught the eyes of top management at his employer, Global Crosspower Solutions, an energy company that specializes in obtaining natural gas trapped underground through a process known as fracking. Butler has an excellent track record for quickly and cheaply persuading land owners to sign mineral rights leases that grant drilling rights over to his employer. Butler and his partner Sue Thomason arrive in an economically struggling Pennsylvania farming town whose citizens are proud of having family farms passed from one generation to the next. Coming from a town and a life very similar to that of the people he is now determined to win over on behalf of Global, Butler tells the story of how his own town died after the local Caterpillar assembly plant closed. The idea of a town surviving solely on family farms being passed down through generations as a viable economy is one that he can no longer accept. He claims to be offering the town its last chance. Butler spends some pleasant afterhours time with Alice, a teacher he meets in a bar.The town decides to put Globals offer up to a community vote and seems willing to vote in Globals favor until a local high school science teacher, who happened to be a successful engineer in his working life, raises the question of the safety of fracking during a town meeting. Butler and Thomasons sales pitch is further challenged when Dustin Noble, an unknown environmental advocate, starts a grassroots campaign against Global, motivated by a tale of his family losing its dairy farm after the herd died as a result of Globals industrystandard fracking process. ........

Source: Wikipedia