There Will Be Blood - REVIEW

There Will Be Blood has been described as a lot of things in its reviews: "a masterpiece", "a work of genius", "the next great American film", and even a modern day Citizen Kane. Sorry, but it's not that good. The fact that it's a tad overrated aside, its a damn good film featuring a mind blowing performance from Daniel Day-Lewis. Considering that the film clocks in at nearly 3 hours, one might expect a story full of action, but it's not. There's action of course, but director Paul Thomas Anderson has chosen to loosely adapt Upton Sinclair's novel "Oil!" as more of a character study of a bad man who only becomes worse over time. For a good portion of the film (between 50 or 75% of the way through) this works fine and Anderson's gliding camera work mixed with closeups builds a hypnotically quiet tension. In one nicely executed scene, the shot opens with the camera staring down an empty pair of train tracks and Daniel Plainview (Day-Lewis) enters from the side on his car. The camera slowly turns to the right before dashing off parallel to Plainview's vehicle as they pull into the oil rich town of Little Boston. Much later on in the film, Anderson drops the flashiness (though Jonny Greenwood's spectacularly unnerving score remains present) which is perfectly fine. But then in the film's final 20 minutes or so, for whatever odd reason, his direction completely collapses and it devolves into something bland and flavorless, leaving all the work to Day-Lewis and Paul Dano (as a preacher who is something of a baby faced calculator). They do an amazing job of carrying the final scene, and their chemistry throughout the entire film is phenomenal, but it's just such a shame that Anderson had to drop the ball when he was so close to the finish line.

Side Note: the film unfortunately suffers from "Jesse James" syndrome: even though it is a period piece, and it's artistic aspects are top notch, there are just too many other good examples of art direction/costume/cinematography, to give it a nomination.

Grade: A

Current Nominations: Best Picture (#3) Best Director - Paul Thomas Anderson (#3), Best Leading Actor - Daniel Day Lewis (#1 WINNER), Best Supporting Actor - Paul Dano (#3), Best Adapted Screenplay (#5), Best Original Score - Jonny Greenwood (#2)