Movie review: 'Promised Land'

And just as Damon collaborated with friend and co-star Ben Affleck on that 1997 film that won them a writing Oscar, he now cowrites with friend and co-star John Krasinski (“The Office”) from a story by John Eggers (“Away We Go”) about former country boy turned corporate salesman Steve Butler (Damon), who's sent by his big-energy employers to procure drilling rights from the residents of a small middle-America farming town that's suffering the effects of today's damaged economy.

But what seems like an easy sell for Butler and his sales partner and friend Sue Thomason (a savvy, funny and engaging Frances McDormand) becomes complicated when respected local schoolteacher Frank Yates (an effortlessly forceful Hal Holbrook) urges the townspeople to weigh the attractive prospects of financial relief against the distinct possibility of future environmental consequences.

The town soon becomes divided over whether or not to allow one of the largest energy corporations in the country to extract gas from shale formations underneath its community through the controversial process of hydraulic fracturing, known as “fracking.” There's the argument that the chemicals used in the process can contaminate groundwater and in turn be detrimental to life above ground.

Further complications arise when cagey environmental activist Dustin Noble (Krasinski) arrives in town to counter Butler and Thomason's efforts to win over the townspeople with some winning ways of his own and some alarming scientific and photographic evidence that fracking eventually can have catastrophic effects on the area's ability to sustain crops and livestock.