good acting, bad story

Rating: 3/10 (19 February 2008)

Everybody seems to agree that Daniel Day-Lewis did a great acting job. There is a lot of disagreement about the story itself. Paul Thomas Anderson wrote and directed, and he probably should have let someone else work on the screenplay. As other reviewers have noted, parts are actually laughable. Anderson spent so much time introducing different plot possibilities in the first and second acts and detailing the quest for oil that he seems to have forgotten the third act entirely. The relationship between the oilman and his adopted son is never fully developed. We jump from the boy's childhood to his wedding. The relationship between the oilman and the minister bounces back and forth -- which one is the protagonist? Neither possesses qualities worth preserving or emulating. This can't be called the story of a tragic fall, since the oilman starts out bad and only gets worse. The abrupt ending, a murder during a drunken brawl, reflected no particular purpose or resolution and had some members of the audience laughing out loud. If you want to watch the disintegration of a man who is victim of his own greed, "Citizen Kane" got it right. This one is not even close.