Excellent movie, but not for the squeamish or easily bored

Rating: 8/10 (10 April 2008)

So after months of failed attempts to see this movie, I finally got around to it. I'd seen No Country for Old Men and it amazed me beyond words. Hearing some of the same sort of talk about There Will Be Blood, I figured it'd be worth seeing. It's an... Interesting movie. Let's put it that way.
One sentence review: "Did you know that this was based on an Upton Sinclair novel? We'll remind you! Again! And Again! (oh, and we've got the totally kick-ass Daniel Day-Lewis in here too, by the way)"
For anyone who hasn't been forced to read an Upton Sinclair novel in high school, I'll sum up his style in short: "Did you know that there are horrible things going on in otherwise innocuous areas? How horrible you ask? Let me tell you! In graphic detail, at length! If you don't feel the urge to vomit by the first chapter, then I've failed as a writer! (oh yeah, and that phrase about 'beating a dead horse'? They were thinking of me when they coined it)"
The fact that it's based on an Upton Sinclair novel is brought up first because the entire existence of the movie is oriented around his style of writing - a graphic and brutal exploration of an area previously viewed by the common folk as fairly hum-drum. The meat packing industry is just food right? Wrong! *People* get ground up at meat packing plants and put into your food! And I'm not talking about that fictional Charlton Heston flick either!
The plot more or less goes like this: "Daniel Plainview is a complete and utter asshole and misanthrope. He's also a talented oil man. If Ayn Rand had a personal hero, he would be it. He goes to Texas.. er, California to find oil, bilk the locals, gets rich doing so, becomes the poster boy for 'creative child neglect', 'shooting your brother from another mother' and finds that once he has it all, he isn't any happier than he was before. Which was 'very much not at all'. Oh yeah, and there's crazy fundamentalists around these here parts. Did we mention that Daniel Plainview absolutely hates religion? This will be funny! Oh wait, Upton Sinclair novel, right. No, it won't be funny in the least."
If I haven't scared you away yet, it's actually a darn good movie. Not for the squeamish, the easily bored or people that think that Shakespeare is crap, to be certain, but a darn good movie all the same. A friend mentioned that it wasn't quite as good as "No Country for Old Men". That movie, at the end, was *more* than just the sum of its parts. This movie? It's somewhat less than the sum of its parts.
Still, 'not *quite* as good as the best movie in the last five years' is impressive. It's worth seeing to be sure.