I wanted to like this film...

Rating: 6/10 (2 February 2008)

There Will Be Blood probably has to be the hardest movie I've ever reviewed. I saw it more than a week ago and yet I could not quite figure out if I liked it or not. It is a very great achievement from director Paul Thomas Anderson, but it's narrative structure just felt so weird. I felt like it was just a bunch of scenes thrown together, sparse in emotion and overly indulgent. I say overly indulgent because every so often, Anderson would thrown in some ridiculous scene that would completely take you out of the story. For example, Eli Sunday (played by Paul Dano) and Daniel Plainview (played by Daniel Day Lewis) are out for each other's blood. At one point, Sunday comes to ask Plainview something. Immediately, Plainview goes off on Sunday, throwing him on the ground and slapping him. He even starts to do a little "stop hitting yourself! stop hitting yourself" type of thing. While this scene is funny, it's completely ridiculous! It would never happen. Anderson didn't build up the feud between them enough to earn a scene like that. Before it, I had though they merely just held a civil dislike for one another. There was not enough story before it to make me think they would physically fight. There are a few more scenes similar to that one and they suffer from the same flaw. Now I've heard from a few people, mainly on movie podcasts, that P.T. Anderson does a lot of cocaine. Now while this is merely speculation, it would make sense for him to have been high when he made this. It has the potential to be such a great movie, but the writing is just everywhere. There Will Be Blood seems like a collection of scenes that don't connect to each other in any way. There's a good movie within it waiting to come out, but it never does. It's a Hollywood epic gone wrong. While I really wanted to like There Will Be Blood, I couldn't look past its obvious writing flaws. There are some great scenes wedged in between the non-existent narrative. Paul Dano and Daniel Day Lewis are good in the film, but I do feel that they both play their parts a little too over the top. Once again this may have just been Anderson's direction or script. I was greatly disappointed in this film, there is SOOO much potential, but Anderson didn't hone his great talent in the right ways to make a good film.