There will be boredom, mostly

Rating: 5/10 (1 August 2008)

For a while this movie did really great on the IMDb list, which urged me to go and see it. Right now, it seems to be in something of a free fall, and I have to say that I can understand why. "There will be blood" gained a lot of hype because of the supposedly phenomenal performance by Daniel Day-Lewis and that probably hid the fact that this movie is not that special.
Well, to get the obvious points of out the way first: yes, the performance by DDL is indeed very very good. It's powerful, it's menacing, it's occasionally very funny and it procudes 2 or 3 really memorable scenes.
Such a shame that there really is not much of a movie to back up the acting. "There will be blood" is a movie that goes more for atmosphere and pretty pictures than for actual content, and that hurts.
The previews present this as an epic struggle between Plainview (Day-lewis) and Eli Sunday (Paul Dano). This is not true. Instead it's 2.5 hours of watching to an extremely unpleasant, extremely unconscientious, extremely calculating and extremely violent person making short work of everybody that opposes him. There is no struggle here, or real plot. Plainview just disposes (either verbally or physically) of whomever he does not like.
Which could theoretically still have made for an interesting movie, but that's also not the case here. The characters are not developed well (we never find out why Plainview is so nasty or why he dislikes everything but the kitchen sink), the plot moves at a snail's pace and does not really go anywhere, the pictures are admittedly pretty but every shot lasts too long, and the music is pretty bad.
Yes, there is a mostly justified jab at religion/Christianity here: (Christian) religion was and is often abused to gain power and manipulate people. Then again his messenger is a character that abhors religion yet manipulates and schemes even more than the priests. what exactly is Andersen trying to say here? In the end "There will be Blood" is mostly art-house fluff I'm afraid: an interesting but poorly delivered message packed in two and a half hours of pretty pictures and annoying music. Day-Lewis's performance, no matter how great, is no way near enough to make up for that.