There Will Be Blood, nominated for eight Oscars, winner of two Oscars, bad film.

Daniel Day Lewis is (as always) mesmerising to watch as oil man Daniel Plainview, but he can’t possibly make up for the lack of a story in this overly long and ultimately pointless film.

It doesn’t take us long after the opening credits before we begin to question his morals and general goodness of being. There is a much quoted scene in the film where Day Lewis talks of his general hatred for his fellow man, a scene which seemed shoe-horned into the film to hammer home the point for those who had fallen asleep due to the lack of story or character development in this initially promising disappoinment of a film.

The film opens well and holds the attention for quite some time before you realise that the film isn’t going to take you anywhere you haven’t already visited in the first 40 minutes, and as it loses your attention it struggles all the more violently to retrieve it, losing all credibility it had built up in the earlier scenes.

Daniel Day Lewis plays the role with such conviction, and such self belief, that for a time you are held to the film in the belief that there is more to this character. Unfortunately this is just testament to the fact that Day Lewis is, indeed, one of the finest actors of our time, for there is no such indication of depth of character in the script itself.

I know that everybody has to see this film for themselves, and perhaps it is worth watching for Day Lewis’s performance, but I advise you to go with no other expectations.

Robert Elswit, accepting his Oscar for best Cinematography said that everyone involved in the film was ‘standing on the shoulders of Daniel Day Lewis’, until I saw the film I didn’t realise just what he meant.

One final gripe about this film… Jonny Greenwood (of Radiohead) did the soundtrack and I found it to be horribly intrusive rather than complementary. Well, that’s it, let the disagreements begin.