There Will Be Blood

I went along to see the movie "There Will Be Blood" last week while in Cork. Having heard a lot of the hype and reviews, particularly Daniel Day-Lewis's performance, I was expecting a good movie.

I have to say I was disappointed - perhaps because I expected a lot more. It is very long - too long, and I felt there wasn't really that much of a story line to it. It was boring in places and could have been a lot shorter. The "music" was a bit annoying at times, and some of the dialogue was hard to understand - you have to pay attention all the time.

Having said all of this, the performance of Day-Lewis as Daniel Plainview is brilliant and is worth going along to see for this alone. As usual, he gets right inside character, and delivers a real tour-de-force of a performance that earned him the Oscar for this role. The acting overall was strong, though Paul Dano as Paul/Eli Sunday is not a believable character.

This movie also won an Oscar for cinematography, which while it is excellent, probably reflects a poor standard in the other nominations.