Not much point & often sluggish; last 15 minutes too farcical to take movie seriously

Rating: 4/10 (21 April 2008)

For the record, I haven't seen a P.T. Anderson film that I enjoyed. Boogie Nights and Punch-Drunk Love had some good moments but ultimately empty. Magnolia was inanely self-indulgent, his worst movie so far in proving "pretentious" with the capital P is the high definition of pro art-house film-making.
I blew off P.T. Anderson as yet another smarmy hack director until I read positive reviews gushing praise for There Will Be Blood, with a praise for Daniel Day-Lewis's "magnificent" performance and beautiful cinematography. So when the DVD came out to the Red Box, I rented it for a measly dollar. And I'm glad not a second dollar is wasted on another rental day.
Now, since I'm a Terrence Malick admirer, the cinematography is one of the sparse few redeeming features of the film. The Oscar win for Best Cinematography may be deserved, but it offers nothing new because dual cinematographers Néstor Almendros and Haskell Wexler achieved in much a similar pattern, albeit better in Days of Heaven which is 3 decades old. Daniel Day-Lewis' much-hyped performance? Not much. His performance is more intense and subtler in The Gangs of New York without going hysterically over the top like he does in some scenes of overacting that would have put Al Pacino to shame. The best actor in the movie is Paul Dano, because his role as a superstitious priest is credibly impressive. I thought he was unfairly robbed of the Oscar nom for Best Supporting Actor.
The pacing is plodding with a barely lean plot and characterization -- the whole movie interspersed with some boring spots. Unlike the prettily shot but awfully boring movie "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" (I turned off DVD player after half an hour passed), There Will Be Blood held my attention despite its boring spots. It's safe to say that despite my admiration of older and classic films, There Will Be Blood is definitely not recommended for those with short-fuse impatience and short attention span. Patience is a virtue throughout the movie, until the last 15 minutes.
The last 15 minutes of the scenes involving the visiting priest and the protagonist-villain is so farcical it flips the entirety of the movie as though the movie's a joke on the audience. I'm not sure what was P.T.'s intention -- the finale so ludicrous it invites second thought as to what was the point of the movie -- not about power, greed, whatever. Sure, there's sociopathic villainy as embodied by the character portrayed with zeal by Daniel. Sure, the priest might have deserved the fate as a hypocrite seeking self-serving interest that antagonize the villain who reacts with emotional volatility.
Enduring two hours of fascinating characterization amid intermittent tedium of pacing only to be bamboozled by the ending makes the casual viewing hardly worth bothering. There's no such a thing as "less is more" -- P.T. insists on "more is more" and so we get the treatment of a ridiculously long movie with the story so basic it could be told in less than 120 minutes, as Malick have done in condensing his second feature film without noticeable loss of character development and plot despite a shooting script that's said to be equivalent of three hours long (including nature shot inserts) with a million feet of film shot.
Regrettably, despite the universal praise, Daniel's performance did not impress me. More of the same as he has proved to be an established actor with consistently good filmography since winning the Best Actor Oscar for My Left Foot. The ending with Daniel's crazed character on the verge of overacting confounded me on the real thematic point of the movie. Whether it's a deadly serious drama or a darkly comic period epic that provide hearty laughs at some intentionally absurd scenes with hammy dialogue is left to the viewer's interpretation.
Overall, There Will Be Blood is not a good analogy on power and avarice that transform the personality of the emerging oil baron. The novel that inspired the movie by Upton Sinclair is probably more substantive in fleshing out the characters and sharp proses for maximum literary impact. P.T. Anderson's effort is wasted making the film that turns out to be less stellar than expected. Don't believe the hype; that's the pretentious, snootily pompous New York - Los Angeles film critics' job to sell the picture that impress them the most in terms of acting, direction, production value, cinematography and script, neglecting to mention the bizarrely surreal comic and snail-pace aesthetics of the film. It's called "director love worship."
Disappointingly underwhelming. Don't believe the hype.
** 1/2