Review: 'There Will Be Blood is predictable

There Will Be Blood    R      

            Daniel Day Lewis stars in a sprawling early 20th century oil industrialist's dream. Paul Thomas Anderson takes story to screen in a lavish story of greed, redemption and revenge. Oil tycoon Daniel Plainview settles in a highly Pentecostal frontier town on the hunch from a prospector and milks them for everything. Present is his "adopted" son who is injured in an accident. A preacher really comes off as a whipping boy. Lewis does a performance far superior to the Butcher in "Gangs of New York" because of a tighter script and he can pull off a Midwestern accent. Evil oil baron idea winks at modern oil barons. Unfortunately, the story suffers greatly from plodding and often confounded logic, and a weird musical score where cello and violin give away too much when they should be cut back, and not enough when there should be music. Whole tracks are silent. It was like the movie was shot on video. Similar to "No Country For Old Men", but that's not a good thing. Considered one of the contenders for best picture of 2007, ("Country" won), but it lacked something. Nobody in it was likeable and the drama just escalates until it becomes nearly ridiculous, finally ending in a gritty confrontation. Just tossing in faith and redemption into a movie about an evil oil tycoon doesn't make this a masterpiece. The ads made it look like a slippery salesman epic, but it's not epic just because the ads said so. the slippery oil person and his dimwitted underlings and townsfolk are just dusty cutouts of characters from better westerns. Go rent "Unforgiven" instead. And the title is ripped from the catch phrase of Jigsaw from the Saw movies, "Ooh there will be blood!" Well actually there won't be enough blood. (Note to Hollywood, your geography stinks. Tehachapi, CA is nowhere near Little Boston, WA. They're 600 miles apart). 
     Review by Adam Browne