Great but owes a little something to Nicholas Roeg

Rating: 9/10 (23 February 2008)

Finally saw it tonight and was really impressed with the superb acting and film-making. Very rare to see an American film these days operating at a level of intensity, socio-political subtlety and as affecting as this film. The use of sound and music was also superb and very different. Tone of the screenplay is a bit uneven but still very absorbing. Visual style was amazing and made me feel like I was in the oil pits of the early 1900's. Daniel Day Lewis was really amazing - I thought the performance would not live up to the hype but was very impressed.
Very much like Nicholas Roeg's Eureka - another film with similar strengths and flaws and a performance by Gene Hackman that matches the excellence of Daniel Day Lewis in this film. I hope the director will keep making films that are as interesting and unique as this one. One of the best character studies of the lust for power and money and how it can make a man paranoid and sociopathic in the long run.