Oil Be Dammned

Rating: 6/10 (17 February 2008)

This is the first time I've seen Daniel Day Lewis on screen; usually he appears in films that are hyped to death and it doesn't help that one of these, Gangs Of New York, teamed him with Scorcese, another pseud's favourite and equally over-hyped as an individual. I can't say I fell asleep or didn't enjoy it but neither am I available for dancing in the street, to paraphrase Sandy Woollcott. It was well made, indubitably and well acted but it is just a movie, Ingrid. The date of the source novel, Oil, by Upton Sinclair, was contemporaneous with McTeague, filmed famously by Erich Von Stroheim as Greed and when we throw in James Dean's Jett Rink in Giant we remember once again that nobody writes in a vacuum, be it novel or screenplay. See it, by all means, but don't lose your head.