great performance, where's the story

Rating: 6/10 (14 January 2008)

Daniel Day Lewis puts in a great performance as Proudview, an oil man. This is the story of a man consumed by greed, the need to dominate others and without any redeeming qualities. He is a fascinating character. The problem with the movie is that he is slowly unveiled to us in the first hour, but then there is another 90 minutes to the movie where additional details are revealed, but nothing more is revealed about his character. There is no plot, just the arc of his life. Unlike some other unlikable characters, e.g. Dennis Hopper in Blue Velvet, there is no compelling reason to keep watching.
I have not read Oil, the Upton Sinclair novel, but I have to believe that something is amiss when the men from Standard Oil are treated as normal but greedy men rather than the same harsh treatment of Proudview.
The soundtrack has got to be the worst I have ever heard. OK, I get it. Proudview is a man whose entire life is composed of sour notes, but 2.5 hours of sour notes is just unrelenting. I nominate the score as the Plan 9 from Outer Space of soundtracks.
Again I haven't read the novel and Hollywood has never needed to adhere to the source material anyway, but a battle a wills between the greedy oil man and the hypocritical young preacher (Sunday) would have made a more interesting story and still be true to Sinclair's darkly negative view of powerful men.
Finally I think there is something wrong with critical review when a great performance is sufficient to earn a movie a great review. Yes this movie takes lots of risks and fails in many of them, but just give an honest review of the movie as a nice try but a miss.