there will be no good reason

Rating: 7/10 (1 February 2008)

Sometimes a single virtue can outshine many glaring inadequacies. A lot of folks, understandably awed by Daniel Day-Lewis's titanic central performance, have mistaken THERE WILL BE BLOOD for as good a film as his acting would warrant. I don't think it is, for a single big reason, but the opportunity to see a master at work is plenty of excuse to see this movie anyway.
The rest of the acting is alright, some of it better than that. The movie has a very specific look, which works to sustain the mood of menace and mounting tension. But none of the characters has an arc. Nobody grows except the son, and that happens for the most part off camera.
The trouble is a lack of drama. Daniel Plainview's central conflict is within himself - everybody else he defeats with deceptive ease. Now, that's perfectly acceptable as far as theme and character go. But this is a story, and even more than that it's a movie: the conflict requires visual externalization. So nothing happens that really matters, until the last five minutes; and, typically, of the last fifteen minutes, ten of them are just an empty rehash of the previous two hours' Pyrrhic battles. Nothing matters to a man who wins everything, so the story doesn't matter to me, until it's over. And that's too late.
In a short career, PT Anderson has already made a few movies that don't look like each other, and only a couple that do. That's nice, and shows a breadth of ability. This is his first movie that's no fun to watch, and that's okay too, because it's not supposed to be fun. But it's not anything else either. The joke of the picture is: here's a guy who would not be satisfied, who finally, Oedipally, must destroy himself to make room for his own following generation, because his son refuses to do it for him. I hear the joke, I get the joke, I just don't think it's funny.
But this actor is his own show. He does not require a script; he does not need a director. In fact, something happens to directors who hire Daniel Day-Lewis: they get steamrolled by the awesome fortune of possessing such a spectacular camera subject. Scorsese and Mann (not on their best days anyway, it must be said), Nicholas Hytner and Phil Kaufman, everybody since James Ivory: they all have fallen down before the prospect of working with this immensely talented fellow. And you can't say it was the worst thing they ever did, this relinquishing of control. If you're going to give it up, you could do worse than give it up to this guy.