Terra promessa

I do believe these characters: A cheerleader/good girl, a jock who is less of a jerk than most jocks, a totally ineffectual loser, and a trashy drifter floozy. But I still need to hear a little more in depth dialog about why they are who they are, or what they want out of life.

Other reviewers have mentioned a couple Reagan speeches in the background or some kind of political message about disappointment in the Reagan years. I see that the "lefty" Robert Redford produced this film, but I did not pick up on the whole Reagan-bashing vibe. There is one scene where the jock throws a tantrum and says, "you lied to me," but I'm not sure to whom he was talking or referring.

I was a lost soul in the 80's, but it never occurred to me to blame Reagan. My problems were entirely a combination of genes and my own decisions. The same goes for these characters.

I couldn't stand the Meg Ryan character, and I couldn't see anything to respect or like about the Sutherland character, so during their sequences, it was more like a documentary about losers. I felt no sympathy. Those two are so off-putting and ugly,they ruin the whole film.

What I did like was the gorgeous scenery and the accurate portrayal of the angst of small town youth. Growing up is scary and there's no place like home. The characters conveyed this well.

Why make it in Utah? I know that Redford lives there, but wouldn't you have to include some references to Mormonism? There was a steelmaker union sign on the main street. Were there steel mills in Utah back in the day? It was supposed to represent a generic working class small town, but nothing in Utah is generic. It's a unique place.

Tracy Pollan is five years older than Jason Gedrick and Meg Ryan is several years older than Keifer Sutherland. But I can't say that I really noticed that. I do think they were weird casting choices. A Jewish girl from Long Island as a small town Utah cheerleader? A Connecticut beauty queen type as a thief and a whore? I have faith that the jock and cheerleader will make a nice couple. She clearly has no direction in college and will find something worthwhile to do back home. He will continue as a cop. They will have a double income and produce a nice middle class life amongst their friends and family. What else is there anyways?

One thing though: Another reviewer mentioned that they should have made more than two years pass by. I agree,because two years is nothing. 20 years old is not the time to panic about your future. You can always go back to school or work for a while. Nothing at 20 needs to be forever.

The film may have made much better sense if they were all 25.

Kiefer Sutherland had a weird choice of roles in the early 80s, and quite a few times, he played wierd characters in often depressing movies. Promised Land is one of them.

The story of Promised Land focuses on some post-high school small town residents who, although they possessed some potential for greatness, their lives never seem to be going anywhere, or at least don't go the way they anticipate. Hancock (Jason Gedrick), who was the town's glorious athlete as a high school basketball player, now spends his days at a thankless job, doing street patrol as a cop. Both he and his girlfriend, Mary (Tracy Pollen) seem to young and rambunctious (at least Gedrick does) and always wanting more than their quick introduction into suburban, Middle class life.

Hancock's friend Danny (Sutherland) is his former high school classmate, a weak and quiet guy who returns to his depressing little town with his wild (and annoying) new wife, Bev (Meg Ryan), who seems to find her husband to be a suitable massicist target. Danny, too, is reminded of better times he may've had (he's not a dumb kid, either), and fears what lies ahead as the town elicits reminders of the ambitions he had, now lost. Of course, if you know movies like this, the story will show no silver lining.

If you like this movie, perhaps you might try searching out 1969, another early Sutherland title that is something along the same lines, but obviously, it is a period drama.

All depression without any real transition as to the why? You just kind of have to accept that's just how it is once high school is over and feel their pain without any inkling of hope. Leave the knife and sleeping pills at home when you watch this one.

In the small town of Ashville, Hancock (Jason Gedrick) is the best basketball player and local hero. Mary (Tracy Pollan) is a cheerleader and his gorgeous girlfriend. They both intend to go to the college together. Their friend Danny 'The Senator' (Kiefer Sutherland) quits high school and moves alone to the Arizona, trying to have a good job and a better life. A couple of years later, Hancock is the local chief of police, living from his glorious past; Mary is studying Arts, and although still loving Hancock, she can not accept life in Ashville and has a new boyfriend; and Danny is a complete loser, who decides to get married with the crazy Beverly (Meg Ryan) and spend the Christmas Eve in his home town with his family. The story ends in a tragic way. 'Promised Land' is a depressive tale about the fate of each one and, in accordance with the initial credits, is based on a true story. The young cast has a great performance, the story is never corny, and it is great to see an American low budget movie about real common people, and not the fancy Hollywood reality. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): 'Terra Prometida' ('Promised Land')

When I was growing up my folks had a saying for whenever I wasn't able to finish some mouth-watering dessert that I had insisted on getting: my eyes were too big for my stomach. That's how I felt about this ambitious but under-inflated would-be epic. It very much wants to be a sort of quintessential 80's picture, a final say on the tragic consequences of so-called Reagan-era greed and consumerism, but it keeps pulling up lame. Like a novice trial lawyer it falters nearly every time it tries to make its case.

Occasionally it gets things right and briefly wanders into "A Simple Plan" or "The Last Picture Show" territory, in its double-edged depiction of small town security and frustration. There's a terrific, understated scene between Jason Gedrick and Tracy Pollan as they swim in a hot spring and lazily recall some of their glory days. Kiefer Sutherland and Meg Ryan have some nice fragile moments in the desert when these two lost souls discover the joy of actually connecting, however briefly, with another human being. There are glimmers of something substantial going on here, which is what makes the whole so disappointing.

The biggest flaw is the amount of time elapsed from Gedrick's game-winning buzzer beater that kicks the story off, to a mere TWO years later, when the 4 principles are at their big "crossroads" in life. Two years is simply not long enough. The film is making the specious argument that somehow Reagan's cold-hearted policies (he appears a couple times on television making supposedly "empty", out of touch speeches) are to blame for Gedrick dropping out of school and settling for becoming a local cop, or Sutherland hitting the road because he can't live up to his nickname ("Senator") by the ripe old age of 19! Yeah, fate and that trickle down economy are really conspiring against those two, aren't they? In order for an audience to really FEEL their desperation, they need to be older with their directions in life more set in concrete. That's why "A Simple Plan" worked so well, where here it's much harder to sympathize with the lead characters. Hell, chalk it up as a bad year or two. They all still have plenty of time to right the ship.

The acting is generally okay. I thought Meg Ryan over-did the hell-raising a bit, but at least she gives the film some real jolts of energy. Gedrick pulls a classic, 4 star nutty in a kitchen at one point that would make Mickey Rourke proud. Unfortunately the writing too often lets them down. There's such a fine line between having inarticulate characters groping for words to express themselves, and the screenwriter groping to give them something meaningful and revealing to say. In this case, it sure felt like the screenwriter was doing the most groping. There's just too many "It's not you. It's me!" and "You just ... don't understand!" type lines. Many of the arguments are forced and unconvincing.

I really liked the film's collision course structure, many of its visuals (the spinning camera around the little car in the desert casts an undeniable spell) and even its bombastic score full of "end of the world" chants and that sort of thing. It was setting me up for a conclusion that I was expecting to have so much more of an impact than it ultimately did. It didn't dig deep enough, didn't flesh out its people or their world (the town is never given a personality other than generically small and sleepy) sufficiently for me to care as much as I wanted to. But I did WANT to, and perhaps that's a small accomplishment. It's certainly better than the not entirely dissimilar "Inventing The Abbotts". But if you really want to see a more successful though equally forgotten riff on these very themes check out an early Bridget Fonda flick called "Out Of The Rain".