I guess if sitting around for two-and-a-half hours and watching a movie about an utterly abhorrent man who finds reasons to hate everyone he meets, even his own son, then "There Will Be Blood" will make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

The man in question is Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis), an oilman at the turn of the 20th century, a man who is single-minded in a way that explains both his successes and his inevitable failure. The movie basically asks: can money and achievement buy happiness? The answer is: not if you stick your finger in the eye of every single person you ever meet.

I quite honestly don't know why Director Paul Thomas ("Magnolia") Anderson would bother to make a film like this. I guess it's sort of like asking the question: "Would you like to hang around Donald Trump for a couple hours?" While my answer might be yes, it's certainly not because I want to get to know the guy any better. It'd be more for the anthropological factors. I'd be trying to figure out why the guy is such an obnoxious jerk. Afterwards, I'm sure I'd feel dirty. I guess that's kind of the way I felt after "There Will Be Blood." It's like putting down a lawn chair next to the highway and waiting for a car accident.

I find it more than a little ironic that the two most antagonistic characters in the film, Plainview and the preacher, Eli Sunday (Paul Dano), are effectively two halves of our current president. One is the oilman (though I doubt George W. Bush ever worked as hard as Daniel Plainview) and the other is the evangelical. Neither is worth a crap, if Anderson is to be believed. The frightening thing though, if we're looking for analogies, is that in each man's worldview, they are the keeper of the truth and they will say or do anything to get what they want. Neither has a soul or a code.

Daniel Plainview is a man who has very little humanity to begin the film and loses what little he has by the end. I'm not sure what to make of Eli Sunday, other than I think it's merely Anderson's way of pointing out how despicable human beings come in all shapes, sizes, and temperaments. Frankly, I don't really think that's enough to make it worth sitting through 160 minutes of misery. Then again, this is a P.T. Anderson film, I should have known better.