It makes me nervous to write a review on a film I rate so differently from the majority of viewers, nevertheless, perhaps in a way that's reason enough to do it at all.

The initial setting is promising enough - greedy shrewd oil man cons religious family into parting with land that stands to make a killing in oil. It is written in the Hollywood bible that of course the righteous will prevail and the wrongdoer fail in the end.

The problem for me was that firstly the film reaches its logical conclusion early on with the oilman's son being struck dumb in a spectacular accident but that the rest of the film seems largely dedicated to finding new but unremarkable ways to prolong the agonising damnation of the same oilman, not adding any heightening of suspense from that premature conclusion, albeit that circumstances do change as the film winds its way over several hours to the end.

The plot should have been scrapped and rewritten from scratch early on in the process - I guess it's that old rule that the more money is committed the harder it is to retrace your steps to the point of failure.