Slow Paced Bizarre tale of Greed...loses narrative pull

Rating: 6/10 (8 March 2008)

There Will Be Blood immediately rips off musical theming from The Shining. No shame in doing so I guess. As a period piece it is quite competent...dialog, settings, costumes all very well done and seemed believable for an early 20th century western frontier. Dialog is somewhat sparse, but camera-work fills in for it. However, the movie's narrative base is more or less a tale of greed/competition and how it drives and perverts the main character Daniel Plainview (Oscar won for by Daniel Day Lewis here) in his relationships with those around him - particularly between his adopted son and a young split-personality preacher. As a self-proclaimed oil-man Daniel is a slightly paranoid incredulous pessimist who is predatory on all those who stand in the way of his greed. There is also an apparent mockery of religion which is built mostly on a vendetta developed throughout the story between the preacher and Oil-man who prays on the trust of the religious. The movie is slow-paced but not necessarily dull. The main character however never grows or seems to learn - so there's a sad repetition in his behavior of insecurity and lashing out. This begins to wear thin - there's no other dynamic. Unfortunately, the last 20 min of the movie are kind of absurd as the director and screenplay writer decided to go off on a tangent and leave the settings and support characters abruptly that had worked earlier on to build up...and then jolt us with a mean-spirited charade of gratuitous violence - becoming a pretentious gimmick. As it is the movie loses its pull and unfortunately cant recover off the epilogue scenes. Perhaps worth a viewing for good acting and production points.