If sleeping aids were milkshakes, There Will Be Blood had its straw in every single one, spending a solid hour like a crack addict snorting plot-infused goodness and prancing around in its underwear before stopping dead in its tracks and falling down face first in middle of church service dreaming that it didn't just make an epic ass of itself. This movie sucks you in with the promise of a dark, twisted story that's building up to some explosive conclusion and for a good hour it does a phenomenal job with it but then the filmmakers run off to go watch No Country For Old Men to figure out how they plan on winning Best Picture, not realizing that those filmmakers ran to steal tips from There Will Be Blood.
Though wonderfully acted by Daniel Day Lewis and Klitz from The Girl Next Door (whatever his fucking name is, not worth my time to IMDB it), There Will Be Blood focuses around Daniel Plainview, an oilman who gets a tip about an amazing undiscovered drilling location from a snot-nosed church brat (Eli) who wants to make a quick buck so he can make his church bigger because religious greed is good if you dump that money right back into the building (sorry, I have a thing against "organized" religion).
As soon as the drilling begins, bad things start happening as Eli (Klitz) watches with a kind of Damien-like satisfaction that makes you think that some mischief's afoot and gets you excited for some grand evil vs. evil-er confrontation but then tells you "oh, that? That's just bad luck…ha! You thought this was caused by…ha! You're stupid." Though the final confrontation is pretty amazing, it's more that of two broken and defeated men as opposed to two rival powers at the top of their game.
Daniel Plainview's decent into madness is a thing of a beauty for a while, but then it just starts purposely throwing things into his life so it can fuck them up and aid in the efforts of despair (like his brother). I just can't get over how nauseatingly boring the middle of this movie was, like staring at the short silent Asian guy that doesn't move during an intense fight scene, but instead of performing some grand spectacle of martial arts ability that makes it worth the wait, he simply stomps on the balls of a dead guy and walks away. I felt cheated, betrayed, and lost patience quickly.
It's not that it was bad, it just didn't go anywhere and once again, like Crazy Heart, it's the performances that picked this movie up from the oily muck and, just like Crazy Heart, an award-winning performance is what stole the show. Plainview and Eli are just fun characters to watch as they both deal with confusion, delusions of grandeur, and their own personal quirks. They play off each other well; the fire in each of their eyes burns bright on the screen and you know that if the damn movie just let them, they could be two very powerful adversaries.
But, no such luck here. Perhaps with a fear or depth or fear of coming across as cliché, There Will Be Blood just comes across as lazy after all is said and done. It's not that it was predictable; it's that there was nothing to predict. I wanted the misfortunate the plagued Plainview to have some sort of reason behind it or at least not be shot as if that were the case, but even the tweaked out violin that raced along in the background when things got tense made you believe something was coming (and on occasion very uncomfortable) and then THAT left you with no climax. Hell, I've heard amateur dubstep on MySpace do better at affecting mood.
Just like No Country For Old Men and Crazy Heart, There Will Be Blood did half of its shit right and the other half wrong, usually fucking up the story and making up for it with performance. There's no reason this should be graded any lower than those for doing same damn thing. There Will Be Blood gets an average 7 dustbusters out of 10.
Yeah, I hate this movie. Not often I say that. I saw it in the theater and was bored to tears for most of it.
ReplyDeleteYou're right, the first hour-ish was phenomenal...but the shit that followed completely wiped out that first hour and I was left with nothin' good to remember it by. With the exception of Daniel Day Lewis's performance, of course. And even that became a bit one-note after a while.
There should have been MORE blood. Or zombies.
LOL! Love it. Zombies would have been awesome. Oil covered zombies
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