Review - There Will Be Blood
There Will Be Blood
Movie Review
Okay, let me point out before I review this movie that on the Internet Movie Database There Will Be Blood was rated 8.8 out of 10 by 25,000 voters.
(The Internet Movie Database if you didn’t know is the best place, bar none, to get movie information, cast, running time, theater showtimes, trailers, reviews, spoilers, etc.)
Let me also point out that, if that weren’t impressive enough, the movie has also been nominated for eight Oscars.
Now having said that.
Whoa my heavens did this movie suck.
If you haven’t seen it yet but are planning to, don’t bother to read any farther. You can spend your money however you want, it’s none of my business. If you have seen it, read on, and tell me if you think I’m wrong, that I’ve missed some big obvious point or something. If you’re not gonna see it, good idea.
It’s the gripping story of a guy in the early 1900’s who figures out how to find oil and then——oh, I was kidding about the ‘gripping’ part——becomes an oil man and makes a living roaming around the country drilling for it, using a kid he borrowed from a former employee as a shill. Then he makes a big strike, and at about that time this kid goes deaf, so he naturally decides that his kid isn’t any use to him anymore and sends him away to school. But he’s not lonely, cz about then his long-lost brother that he didn’t know he had shows up and starts hanging around with him and borrowing money.
Now the thing is, in order to run a pipeline to get his oil to the coast, he has to run 50 miles of pipe through some old guy’s property, and the old guy insists that if he wants a lease for his pipeline, he——you guessed it——-has to go to church, at this church some creepy preacher guy runs.
So he goes to church, where he tearfully admits that he’s abandoned his son. And admits it several more times. (You may have seen this part in the previews.) And the creepy preacher guy is very glad to hear him admit it, being a creepy preacher guy.
After church he orders someone to have his son sent back to him…perhaps he felt a bit lonely, because the night before he’d shot his brother through the head (it’s okay: it turns out he was not really his brother at all).
Then he gets old and he has bought himself a huge fancy mansion with two bowling alleys, and he spends his declining years drinking a lot and eating off the floor in the David Hasselhoff way. Then his son comes to see him to tell him he’s gotten married, and the oil man says hey that’s great, by the way you’re not really my son and I’ve never liked you. His son says, good, and leaves.
Next on the oil man’s social calendar is the creepy preacher guy, who is visiting after all this time to say, hey guess what, the guy who leased you that land died and left all the land to me, so now if you want to drill on it, I’ll sell it to you. The oil man says, sure, I’ll drill on it, but only if you denounce God. The creepy preacher guy says, “Oh! All right then,” and denounces God readily. So then the oil man says, oh guess what, there’s no oil on that land, and you’re creepy. Then he chases creepy preacher guy around the bowling alley and bludgeons him to death with a bowling pin.
Okay…I like Daniel Day-Lewis. I liked him in Last of the Mohicans, and I thought he did a great job in Gangs of New York, although I wasn’t impressed by the movie itself. (Maybe it was all the huge Dr. Seuss hats.) So he did a good job in this movie. Meaning that he acted well. I mean, he made a mean greedy murderous baby-stealing child-neglecting Texas oil man likeable. Nice job!
Also the cinematography was good. That means the camera took pretty pictures, right? Yeah, that was good. It looked very much as if the film was actually taking place in the early 1900’s, which I think is what they were going for. Very authentic. The props and costumes and such were also good, and I liked everyone’s accents and such.
Maybe that’s enough for most people? Maybe if the camera shots are nice, and the actors do a good job, then they can make a movie about anything, any random group of people doing any random number of things, and most people will be satisfied with that and go home and get on the internet and vote “10!!! OMG LOL!!1!”?
But not for me. What’s the expression? You can put a dress on a pig, but it’s still a pig. Oh yeah, it’s prettier than it was without the dress, but it’s still a pig. Yeah, you can take it out on a date, but you’d still be dating a pig. Yeah, you can whisper dirty things in the pig’s ear, but in the end you’re just making a move on a pig.
Something like that. Anyway, you can stuff this movie with good acting and authentic dialects all you want, but it’s still a piece-of-crap movie. You can pad it out to nearly three hours, but it’s still nearly three hours of crap. You can fill it with old-timey cars and horse-drawn carriages and era-appropriate costumes, but you’ll ultimately be participating in just a big huge giant waste of time and money.
I’m sorry. Perhaps I’m a bit of a movie snob…what with all my Hollywood insider knowledge, and my brilliant career on the stage. But I am one of those people who just doesn’t like a movie without a point. Or a plot. Or characters that I care anything about. These are just things I personally look for in a movie. In other words, A Reason For Me to Ever Want to Watch It.
By the time the movie was wrapping up, I couldn’t've possibly cared any less about what happened to any of the characters. If the oil man had ended up dead, I’d've said, “Okay then.” If (when) the creepy preacher guy died, I’d've said, “Fine by me.” Even if the deaf kid had ended up hung from a tree, I’d've said, “Oh that’s too bad, but he never really had much of a personality, did he.”
After the movie was over, I was like, “Yeah? And?” and also, “So?” These are not good questions for a movie to leave unanswered.
Was it maybe a true story or something? I haven’t heard that it was. If it were a true story, then I could forgive some of this stuff, I mean, that’s the trouble with true stories, whatever happens (or doesn’t happen) happens (or doesn’t happen). You’re stuck with the actual events. Still, the question would remain, why bother to make a movie based on this pointless, albeit true, story?
Maybe I just don’t get it. Maybe it’s me. I mean, 25,000 high votes, eight Academy Award nominations——
Okay, well, Academy Award nominations don’t necessarily mean anything. That’s been proven. Just go back and look at a list of movies that have won Academy Awards, and you’ll go, “Say what now?” about maybe half of them.
But 25,000 voters? They can’t all be wrong? Can they?
Well I guess they can, seeing as they are. Maybe IMDB needs to really take a good hard look at their rating system. Maybe it’s one of those internet pranks where a bunch of people are instructed to vote up a movie as a joke. Or maybe it’s just that more people than even I can imagine are very very stupid.
Perhaps the people who voted this movie so well just really like that a movie delivers what it promises.
“Hey, this movie is called There Will Be Blood.”
“Yep”
“But do you really think There Will Be Blood?”
“Sure!”
“Oh come on. You really think There Will Be Blood?”
“Maybe not.”
“I don’t know. I guess we’ll see.”
(one bad movie later)
“Hey, did you see that at the end?”
“What?”
“There Was Blood!”
“Do you know you’re right! And quite a lot of it, too!”
“Well it was called There Will Be Blood after all.”
“Aptly named!”
“I have to tell you, I was worried, cz after about 150 minutes I started to think, wait, Will There Be Blood?”
“Oh yeah…not much Blood at all. Until right at the end there.”
“Yeah, when the oil guy grabbed the bowling pin? Sure enough, There Was Blood.”
“Yes, and so much Blood! It almost made me forget about the shameful lack of Blood throughout the rest of the movie.”
“Do you know what I’m going to do?”
“What’s that?”
“I am going to get on my computer and go to the Internet Movie Database and give There Will Be Blood ten out of ten!”
“Are you really?”
“You know it! There Really Was Blood, after all!”
“You are so right!”
“You should too!”
“Well I would, but being a pig in a dress and all, I’m not very good on the interweb.”
“Hey…I’ll log in as you and vote the movie a ten out of ten on your behalf!”
“Would you? Perhaps you could make accounts for my 24,900 pig brothers and sisters and vote a ten from each of them!”
“I sure will! Now come here, you….”
Okay, well, I think I’ve given There Will Be Blood more than enough attention…more than it deserved, certainly. Personally I can’t wait for the sequel, There Will Be Dancing Girls. I certainly hope it delivers.
By the way…why is his name Daniel Day-Lewis? Did he marry someone, but keep his own name? Doesn’t he know that the guy gets to keep his own name regardless?
and there wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiilllll
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