Don't believe the hype. Everything you've heard is as exaggerated as the title is misleading.

Rating: 7/10 (27 February 2008)

After watching this movie, I thought Mr. Lewis did a pretty good job, and the story was fairly interesting if nothing new. That's why I am once again flabbergasted at the reaction of the critics, press, and now the awards. This is as classic and timeless as was the Western, 3:10 to Yuma. Please don't miss the sarcasm. 3:10 to Yuma was a second rate western and an insult to the original. Both the story and the performances were rote and unconvincing. There Will Be Blood was a better effort. But my God people, Rendition, Atonement, The Quiet American ... THESE are movies !!!
I'm afraid it's yet another Oscar year based on some criteria I haven't been let in on. No doubt Daniel Day Lewis did a good job, but great? There was hardly enough to his character to base that opinion on. The film depicted how the oil industry began and told us that yes, the same type of mentality which drew people to the'oil-rush', are basically the same as they are now. Manipulative, controlling, and capitalistic to the point at which it's their God given duty to give little or nothing while taking all if you can, cause goshdarnit, that's the daggum American way. If that sounds harsh, do a count of the Native Americans and Mexicans in this movie. They'd been 'dealt with' thoroughly enough at this point to find it best to lurk in the background of this movie. Kind of ironic, isn't it, what with the 'immigrant problem' now. You know, when a lot of the people wanting in are those the land was stolen from in the first place.
Lewis played a cold, emotionless bastard, he portrayed that without equal. But that's all he did. His character was so one dimensional that it's over two and a half hours of playing the same note perfectly, while ignoring the exploration of all those other keys. There's nothing historical to be proud of here, no nugget of information previously unknown. It was simply a character study of a controlling man who's psychosis eventually pushes him past the point of no return. With a conscience as baron as the landscape, and the sole driving force to gain more, there was no opportunity provided for an actor no matter how talented to exhibit the range of emotions a supposedly Oscar worthy performance provides the evidence for.
Mr Lewis is an amazing actor who's done work of that caliber before and no doubt will do so again. There Will Be Blood, a title which still has me puzzled, just wasn't it. All of this enthusiastic praise for this project does little other than further remove the public's credibility as far as the awards are concerned, or leaves them feeling stupid for being too thick to see something that was never there in the first place.