There will be tedium

Rating: 3/10 (2 January 2009)

First off - Best Acting Oscar? What a load of rubbish! DDL plays a caricature throughout. He's either doing an impression of Sean Connery playing a pantomime villain, or a camped-up sheriff in a bad western. This should have been called 'There will be boredom'. Two hours of endless yawns, where I failed to feel a thing for any of the characters. It was so unclear what this was about. Was it about a father and son relationship? Greed against good? God against oil? None of the above were realized in this arduous and thoroughly pointless epic. Basically, if you enjoy watching an actor pull off all the tricks, you'll like this. But if you like a well-paced story, with humor and drama, you must admit this is trash. Okay, so it was quite atmospheric at times, with the droning soundtrack and the bleak and expansive landscapes. But this hardly qualifies it for award consideration. It's just a vehicle for DDL, and if you think he's good you'll like it, but he's not. The milk shake monologue at the end is cringe-worthy. What a waste of time. Pretentious and slow film-making at its worst. Oh yeah, and yet another movie without a meaningful part for a woman.