I don’t see how it got a 92% on Rotten Tomatoes. Does anyone that actually likes the movie want to chime in as to why it was any good? The acting was good, but that was about it.
There was almost no plot development. The whole thing was slow, long, and the soundtrack was really bizarre. There was very little dialog. Mainly, the story was about how just about everyone was a dishonest piece of work out to scam everyone else out of their money. The main character, Plainview, was the worst of them all, beating the crap out of just about everyone and even killing a few people for no reason. Plainview didn’t get any kind of payback for what he did — there was no moral to the story and no real resolution. Instead, Plainview just gets more and more drunk and more and more out of control. The whole movie kind of spirals out of control with him, making you feel as though you were getting drunk right along with the guy. It just didn’t make any sense.
The only one that was honest was Plainview’s adopted kid. He gets smacked around by his father, blown up in an oil rig explosion, loses his hearing, and gets sent off to a boarding school. Eventually he has the guts to part ways with his father later in life.
I guess you could say that the point was to illustrate how cutthroat the oil business was in early twentieth century California. Everyone was looking out for themselves. Maybe there was something I missed, I’m just not sure.
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