The Promised Land is a promising but ultimately unsatisfying portrait of 18th century hierarchies.

You try surviving in the Danish hinterlands with only a hot peasant girl and some potatoes. In this battle of the bastards, the handsome guy wins.

Watching The Promised Land recently at the Palm Springs International Film FestivaI, I felt like someone had leaked to the Danish Film Commission my audacious script about settling the impervious Nebraskan Sandhills in the late 1800s. But The Promised Land’s man-against-nature, man-against-monarchy, man-against-local-asshole story set in 1750s Denmark …