Short of brilliance.

Rating: 5/10 (25 March 2008)

The movie starts out really well.The casting is great, the settings are believable. The dialogue are very good, they inform you, keep you intrigued. The direction is flawless, but thats were the positives end.This is a character driven story, you take Daniel Lewis out of it and you end up with a mediocre and dark story.Dano nails his character at the beginning but overacts a bit towards the end, you don't really get to learn much about his character except that he is an avid and fanatical prophet. The story is appealing and fresh until Plainview achieves his goal of becoming a millionaire, after that it falls into a tale of unmotivated excesses, crime, and murder, and yes, blood! An epic of this scale usually offers a couple of sweeping vistas but not here, wrong address. The movie feels a bit confined throughout. It doesn't really have a clear message and it doesn't have any redeeming qualities.Still, it is a movie worth watching but as far as calling it a masterpiece, well, it isn't the case, it falls way short of achieving that goal.nevertheless, it is worth watching.