There Will Be Blood (2007)

There Will Be Boredom In Lewis's New Movie

By Yahoo! Shopping User  Apr 15, 2008 | 0 out of 1 found this There Will Be Blood (2007) review helpful

Pros: The on-site shooting made for beautiful scenery.

Cons: The movie gets far too bogged down in itself and moves excessively slowly. Not only this but the movie takes itself far too seriously. It is aimed more at the artsy crowd than the general audience.

'There Will Be Blood' was among the toast of Hollywood when it won a pair of awards at the Oscars. It may have won a pair of awards, but the majority of the awards went to a certain other movie; namely 'No Country For Old Men.' It is no wonder that 'There Will Be Blood' did not receive all the awards it was expected to win. It could very easily be considered a specialty film, along with being overly self-indulgent and simply boring.

There are only a couple flaws to this movie. But those flaws are major flaws, that sunk this movie in itself. The biggest flaw of all in this story is that the movie is so long. The run time is just over two and a half hours. In some cases, such as in Martin Scorcese's 'The Departed', that two and a half hours is more than bearable. That story kept itself going without getting bogged down in itself. 'There Will Be Blood', however, was the exact opposite. This movie was long, and it ran very slowly. The extremely slow pace of the story leads to a difficulty in wanting to sit through it after the first ninety minutes.The movie trudges along from the very beginning, as if it had been stuck in its own oil slick. To make matters even worse, the movie starts off with almost twenty minutes of nothing but scenery and actors. The only thing even resembling dialogue in that first period of time is the young baby. It isn't until after that that viewers even begin to hear any real lines.

The other major downfall to this movie is that it fails to live up to its expected storyline. The story centers around Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day Lewis). Daniel is a young independent oil man who is trying to establish himself and become rich. The only real conflict of the story is between the young preacher, Eli Sunday. Ironically, Eli is a preacher. The conflict between the two is more or less a religious allegory. Daniel represents humans through his greed and lack of faith. Eli is the opposite of that, thus creating conflict. While the ending will not be given away here, the best way to explain it is that it happens just as abruptly as the story's beginning.

While there are negatives to this movie, there is at least one positive. That one positive is the backdrop. The onsite shooting made for beautiful scenery throughout the movie. Whether it was the plains or the more mountainous areas, the scenery in this movie was beautiful. Sadly, though, that is about the only positive to this self-indulgent, slow moving story that takes itself far too seriously. It may very well leave most audiences bored than enlightened by the end. So again, it is no wonder that the movie only received two of the awards, for which it was nominated.