Made hash of Upton Sinclair

Rating: 1/10 (29 June 2008)

Aside from Daniel Day Lewis's performance, there is nothing positive I can say about this movie. How Anderson can take one of the great muckraking novels ever written, Upton Sinclair's "Oil!" and turn it into an incomprehensible mess is beyond me. Where is Sinclair's righteous indictment if the oil barons? Where is his loathing of Standard and Union Oil? Where is his detest of the Big Railroads and of the Southern Pacific in particular? It is clear that Anderson either didn't read or misunderstood one of Upton Sinclair's masterworks or simply wanted to create some sort of amoral morality tale and eviscerated a great work of literature to do it. If you really want to know about the greed, recklessness and amorality of the early oil industry forget this film and go read the book.