Promised Land (1987 film)

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Promised Land is a 1987 drama film, written and directed by Michael Hoffman, and it stars Kiefer Sutherland and Meg Ryan. It is set in Utah and is apparently based on a true story. It is notable partly for Ryan playing an atypical part as a hellraiser. It was the first film to be commissioned by the Sundance Film Festival, and uses the drama over economic class and manhood in order to offer a critic of the Reagan Administration. The film is rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America for some profanity and sexual situations.

[edit] Story

This gritty drama opens following two American male high school acquaintances a few years after graduation now suffering from deep anger and anguish over the fact that they are not as successful as they thought they would be. Hancock (Jason Gedrick) is the high school basketball star, that got into college on an athletic scholarship only to lose the scholarship to a better player. Unable to succeed in college based on his academic merit, he returns to his hometown, becomes a police officer and is slowly moving into a middle-class mediocrity with his cheerleader girlfriend, Mary, who is in college and plans to major in the arts. Hancock is still stewing over the fact that he is no longer the sports star and that his girlfriend is not only reluctant to marry him but may end up being more successful than he.

Danny (Kiefer Sutherland)is the academic "nerd" that was supposedly destined to be so successful that he earned the nickname "Senator". It was felt by some that one day he would become a decent and just politician. He has returned home with his psychotic wife, Bev (Meg Ryan).

After a quick Christmas Eve reunion with his parents, Danny learns that his father is dying. He is unable to come to grips with the fact that while he left town with great expectations, he has returned a poor drifter. He shows a sensitive side even though he has married this trampy, bossy and psychotic woman. His desire to run from his problems again,however, prompts Bev to mock his manhood in front of some of his high school friends at a bar and the two decide to hold up a convenience store perhaps as a means for Danny to prove his manhood or because that is just what "Hollywood white trash" would do.

Just then, Hancock, unaware that Danny has returned to town, drives into the store's parking lot arguing with his girlfriend about the future of their relationship. Interrupting the robbery he fatally shoots Danny and wounds Bev. Hancock then suffers something of an emotional breakdown. Danny and Hancock are shown to really have little in common except that Danny once had a crush on Mary and perhaps a repressed crush on Hancock.

As other police officers and paramedics arrive on scene, Hancock drives with his girlfriend to an open field where he had previously shared, with his police partner, some of his frustrations. He screams to Mary how he feels he has been lied to while growing up. While it is unclear who precisely lied to him, the film seems to implicate Reagan. The anger that Hancock shows probably stems from how he now perceives the universal achieveability of the so-called "American dream" to be nothing but an illusion! Later Hancock has to personally inform Danny's father that he has killed his son and thus the film ends with bleak social commentary on the limited economic opportunities for small town Americans in the twentieth century.

[edit] Social Commentary

The Utah town is often depicted in a dark and cold winter, thus provoking the symbolism of death and despair. Television speeches by then President Ronald Reagan talking about the virtues of freedom, wealth and opportunity, in the midst of the deadness of the town and its principal characters add to the film's theme of exploring the other side of the American dream of those middle class and working class Americans that are bitterly dissatisfied with their own lives.