THERE WILL BE BLOOD [review] 2007

February 23, 2008 · Print This Article

I had been looking forward to seeing THERE WILL BE BLOOD for a very long time. For some reason, this movie was particularly hard to come by. When I was finally able to watch it, the movie was not at all what I thought it would be. Not that it had to be anything, but what it was I didn’t like, pretty much at all. This is what BLOOD was to me: a strange, horror film or thriller soundtrack, an over-the-top lead performance, a script entirely devoid of any and all humor, one single storyline, and a very unsatisfying ending, all these sum up BLOOD.

Daniel Day Lewis as Daniel Plainview is in virtually every frame of the film. If he is not in the scene on screen, something will happen to soon bring him into it. There are no other storylines, at all. … There is not a single cutaway to any other character, unless that character will soon be talking to Plainview. This, I guess, is supposed to be a character study, but when a character can be pegged from the very beginning, and he also happens to be a first-rate bastard, then seeing that character in every frame with no relief adds up to a dull and almost unwatchable film.

…Yes, at some points I considered stopping the film. Something I’ve only ever done twice in my life (during Annie Hall and I can’t remember the other, maybe it was only one then). I made it to the end, but the final scene made me most want to stop watching. It was totally over the top, and on top of that, brutal to watch for its violence.

…If you feel like spending 158 minutes with a bastard, then maybe you will like BLOOD. I didn’t, and I have no interest in ever seeing it again.

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