SPOILER (clearly marked) BELOW!
Promised Land is competently directed and well-written (the dialog is great, although the story is neither particularly interesting nor believable), but it's mainly a character-driven, actor's movie. What the characters do is uninteresting, but how they do it is fascinating.
Jason Gedrick, Kiefer Sutherland and Meg Ryan are fantastic in the leads. Most of the other actors are at least competent, although their roles are far less well-developed.
Gedrick's has-been high-school basketball star is totally convincing and amazingly complex and sympathetic, far more interesting than such people are in real life.
SPOILER HERE!!!! +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ Sutherland's sweet, nerdy, needy, clueless loser reminds me of Plato (Sal Mineo) in Rebel Without a Cause - a character so profoundly disabled emotionally that dying young is not only inevitable but a blessing. He's like a person born with no skin. +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ END OF SPOILER
Meg Ryan is fascinating as his miserable, destructive and self-destructive wife - a bad influence but not really a bad person.
These three actors (and the brilliant writer who created the roles) turn familiar stereotypes (The Washed-Up Jock, The Loser Nerd, The Crazy B!tch) into full, rich, multidimensional human beings.
But these three characters are more than human beings, because real human beings are just as simplistic and flat as the stereotypes they inspire. These are great movie characters, BETTER than real people.
That's why we watch movies instead of real people: great movie characters are lots more interesting. The three lead characters make this otherwise mediocre movie a delight to watch.
Promised Land is competently directed and well-written (the dialog is great, although the story is neither particularly interesting nor believable), but it's mainly a character-driven, actor's movie. What the characters do is uninteresting, but how they do it is fascinating.
Jason Gedrick, Kiefer Sutherland and Meg Ryan are fantastic in the leads. Most of the other actors are at least competent, although their roles are far less well-developed.
Gedrick's has-been high-school basketball star is totally convincing and amazingly complex and sympathetic, far more interesting than such people are in real life.
SPOILER HERE!!!! +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ Sutherland's sweet, nerdy, needy, clueless loser reminds me of Plato (Sal Mineo) in Rebel Without a Cause - a character so profoundly disabled emotionally that dying young is not only inevitable but a blessing. He's like a person born with no skin. +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ END OF SPOILER
Meg Ryan is fascinating as his miserable, destructive and self-destructive wife - a bad influence but not really a bad person.
These three actors (and the brilliant writer who created the roles) turn familiar stereotypes (The Washed-Up Jock, The Loser Nerd, The Crazy B!tch) into full, rich, multidimensional human beings.
But these three characters are more than human beings, because real human beings are just as simplistic and flat as the stereotypes they inspire. These are great movie characters, BETTER than real people.
That's why we watch movies instead of real people: great movie characters are lots more interesting. The three lead characters make this otherwise mediocre movie a delight to watch.