Character Film

Rating: 8/10 (3 June 2008)

This is a character-based film. A lot of people have issues with plot points etc. and that's all fair, but I think in the end this is a superbly produced look at a hard-edged man who is, over the long course of his life, steadily corrupted by capitalist greed. A truly rich adaptation of a complex protagonist - we at once love and hate him. While his innate businessman charisma charms us all, we all the while feel a strange lingering sympathy for this man plagued by a deep-rooted hatred for the world. The source of his loathing and the story of his past is never concretely explained, (perhaps this is what alienates some viewers) but we are meeting Plainview as though we are meeting him in real life, never to surely know what happened in his past to create the man we are meeting now. This adds intrigue and mystery to his story. What the film masters in Plainview's characterization, it often lacks in the development of subplot and neighboring characters that could easily have been made more faceted and interesting. But in the end, it's all about Plainview, his rise and demise.