User Reviews

The world of cinema has seen and marveled a plethora of phenomenal performers, who over the years have entranced billions of viewers globally with their guile, grandeur, subtlety, eloquence and idiosyncrasy, but I dare say that none of their performances can match Daniel Day-Lewis' portrayal of Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood, for sheer ruthlessness, panache, eloquence and cheek. Being the chameleon that he truly is, Daniel Day-Lewis incredibly musters up all his prodigious talent as an actor to conjure up his misanthropic alter ego, Daniel Plainview, whose perpetually smirked face bolstered by his malice filled eyes makes him one of the strongest and the most fascinating characters ever caricatured on the silver screen. Daniel Day-Lewis is at the top of his game and virtually unstoppable as Daniel Plainview, a portrayal that not only resuscitated him as an actor, but also established him as someone who wouldn't leave a single stone unturned to bring his character to life and perhaps it is this very attribute that has helped him in his endeavor to be the absolute best at what he does.

Paul Dano is absolutely brilliant as Eli Sunday and has complimented Daniel Day-Lewis in every sense of the word in spite of the fact that he barely had a week to prepare contrary to Daniel Day-Lewis, who had a whole year to prepare. Eli Sunday is ambitious, enigmatic, placid, pesky and pusillanimous and despite being highly contrasting to Daniel Plainview, ironically has many similarities to him, especially the uncanny demeanor that helped them both to inveigle others. It is the chemistry and the ever growing tension between them that makes the movie haunting and spectacular.

There Will Be Blood is a morbid tale of greed, betrayal and obsession adorned by some great performances, visually stunning cinematography and masterful direction. Plainview owns a mine with potential silver deposits and his assiduity finally pays off when he discovers a silver ore. He sells it to acquire a crew to help him with the subsequent diggings in the mine. After the mine runs out of silver, oil is discovered in it and hence begins Plainview's journey of insatiable greed and morbid obsession. In order to acquire more oilfields and to strike out further deals easily, he adopts a young boy and names him as H.W. to help build a facade of a benevolent family man for himself. It almost takes him a decade to establish himself as a minor oilman, but this moderate success further intensifies his avarice. Subsequently, a young man named Paul Sunday (Paul Dano) visits Plainview's camp and offers to sell information about his family's ranch, which he claims to have an ocean of oil underneath it. Plainview and H.W. travel to the Sunday Ranch pretending to be on quail hunting while hiding their ulterior motive of verifying Paul's claim. Being as perspicacious as he was, it didn't take him long to find the vestiges of oil in the cracks formed due to the recent earthquake. He tries to inveigle the Sunday patriarch (who almost cried with rapture on hearing the offer) to sell him the land at a moderate price (which he calls quail price and not oil price), but is stymied by owner's ambitious son, Eli Sunday (also played by Paul Dano), who asks him to pay an additional ten thousand dollars towards the building of the Church of Third Revelation. Plainview reluctantly pays him five thousand dollars as advance and promises to pay the remaining amount once the drilling starts. Plainview assembles his crew at the Sunday Ranch and builds the first derrick. He also buys almost all of the land surrounding the Sunday Ranch so he will have not only those drilling rights but also the right to build a pipeline to the ocean to circumvent the railroads and their shipping costs. Eli wants to bless the derrick before drilling begins but Plainview rebuffs him. Using the money given by Plainview, Eli builds his church projecting himself as a preacher, faith healer and prophet. Soon the church has many followers, most of whom are Plainview's workers. Eli's increasing influence on the people and his display of false divinity starts pestering Plainview, who is further flummoxed by congregation's frequent gatherings (the daily prayers prevented the workers from taking desired rest, thereby decreasing their efficiency). Plainview beseeches Eli to make them less frequent, but Eli dismisses him with disdain. Plainview's ruthless ego is badly jolted by Eli's stubbornness and he brutally assaults him and even threatens to kill him when Eli asks him for the remaining money. Eli returns home all covered with mud after Plainview's assault and takes out his frustration on his myopic father, blaming him for acquiescing to Plainview's naked ambition. H.W. is deafened during an oil rig incident and starts behaving as a brat. Disconcerted by the change in the mannerisms of his son, he sends him away. Eli soon gets his revenge when a fellow named Bandy forces Plainview to get baptized at the Church of the Third Revelation (as a penance for a murder that Plainview committed and of which only Bandy knew). While baptizing him, Eli humiliates him by repeatedly slapping him and calling him a sinner for abandoning his hapless child. This incident further intensifies the hatred in Plainview and sets the tone for a deeply haunting finale when they meet many years later.

P.T Anderson once again proves his mettle as a director and manages to pack a punch with this poignant and a deeply disturbing masterpiece. The movie incredibly succeeds on every level and entertains immensely, while still delivering a strong message. It was undoubtedly the best picture of 2007 and one of the best of the decade. In fact, it was very remiss of the academy to keep up with its long earned notoriety and prefer a relatively mediocre 'No Country for Old Man' over this truly haunting masterpiece.

P.S. 10/10

Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) is an ambitious, slimy oil tycoon who begins building up an empire in the southwest using his considerable charm, his adoptive son H.W. (Dillon Freasier/Russell Harvard), and ruthless business acumen. He descends on the town of Little Boston, California, building a huge oil derrick and enriching the town. He clashes with Eli Sunday (Paul Dano), the fanatical young preacher, develops a strained relationship with his son (who is deafened in an accident), and solidifies his empire - but at the same time begins to unravel as a person.

"There Will Be Blood" has received mountains of acclaim, as one of the best films not only of the year, but of the decade - and by some, of all time. It's easy to see why, as the film has a great deal going for it: an interesting-on-paper story, impressive direction and cinematography, and most of all, an amazing performance by Daniel Day-Lewis. But at the heart of TWBB is an emptiness, which not even the greatest performance can assuage, and that is the character of Daniel Plainview.

The film begins promisingly, with a brilliant fifteen-minute opening scene devoid of dialogue, as Plainview and his associates dig out their first oil well. The introduction to Plainview as a slippery, manipulative man is well-done, and the first two hours or so are gripping. I sat engrossed, comfortable in knowing that all of the build-up would lead somewhere great. Unfortunately, towards the end, I realized that the opposite was true; the film wasn't leading anywhere, and indeed my enjoyment of it largely ended with a painfully contrived and ridiculous anti-climax.

The movie has a number of problems in narrative structure. It doesn't have much in the way of a traditional storyline. This is not inherently a bad thing, but the detached nature of the film makes it hard to care about what goes on. The only fully developed thread is the troubled relationship between Plainview and his son H.W., whom the former views as prop to manipulate his competitors and showcase his success. And even this is dropped like a potato at the end of the film. There is also the digressive nonsense of Plainview's "brother" (Kevin J. O'Conner) which adds nothing to the film.

Another flaw is the movie's lack of context. Though it is set in the early 1900's - a turbulent time when the US government led by Theodore Roosevelt, William Taft, and Woodrow Wilson were tearing down business monopolies - there is no political or historical context beyond super-titles and a few brief mentions of Standard Oil. As the film was essentially a character study, I wasn't expecting an in-depth examination of politics and history, but a few illusions to the time period beyond "1911" flashing on the screen would have helped. The attacks on the hypocrisy of religion and big business are socialist primer material (unsurprising given the source is an Upton Sinclair novel) and bring nothing new to the table.

The basic problem of the film is in its lead, Daniel Plainview. Not in Daniel Day-Lewis, mind you, who gives one of the greatest performances in recent memory, but in the character itself. Plainview would be an interesting supporting character or villain, a slimy, manipulative man who thoroughly hates everyone besides himself. But there really isn't any depth to Plainview, and thus the film has a hollow center. He doesn't develop over the course of the story; he remains the same character throughout, a bitter, greedy misanthrope, and after awhile he becomes little more than a caricature of an evil businessman.

The main reason to see this film is Daniel Day-Lewis. While I wasn't particularly enamored of his turn as Bill the Butcher, Day-Lewis's amazing turn as Plainview almost overcomes the script's shortcomings. Day-Lewis is a fascinating premise, and the brilliance of his performance conversely accentuates the weakness of his character. If it were in aide of something better, Plainview would be the most memorable character in the last twenty years of cinema. As it stands, it's still a remarkable achievement, and if Day-Lewis doesn't win an Oscar there is no justice.

Other than Day-Lewis, the cast is non-descript. Paul Dano has received acclaim for his performance as Eli Sunday, but the role requires little more than elementary ham acting. The film's climax in particular illustrate the weakness of his performance. There are a few names in the supporting cast (Ciaran Hinds, Kevin J. O'Connor), but they remain in the background throughout. Cinematography, music and direction by Paul Thomas Anderson are all fabulous, with memorable set-pieces such as the oil explosion and the aforementioned beginning stand-out, but they do little more than cover up the weakness at the heart of the film.

"There Will Be Blood" looks like it should be a great film, but it is a deeply flawed movie with a weak central character. Nonetheless, it's worth a look, and if nothing else Day-Lewis should make it interesting.

6/10

With all of the hype surrounding Daniel Day-Lewis' performance (he was, in fact, given a Best Actor nod from the San Diego Film Critics Society, for whatever that is worth) in the P.T. Anderson-directed tale of early American oil speculation, "There Will Be Blood," I can only relate my extreme disappointment.

This would have made an interesting 90-minute movie, but, unfortunately, it runs over 140-minutes, most of which is smeared with plasma and petroleum to the extent every character is sullied and unrecognizable as a human being.

Perhaps Anderson wanted it that way, after all, it's really only Day-Lewis¹ character (the lubricious Daniel Plainview) that even comes close to developing; the others are simply there to keep him company and accept his violent tirades.

Yes, times were tough in the early hardscrabble years of the American West, but this guy makes Jonas Cord ("The Carpetbaggers") look like Mother Theresa.

We first meet Plainview in 1898 mining for silver in Arizona. After a nasty fall in which he breaks his ankle, he discovers oil in the shaft. After a few years, he has a crew and a few successful wells.

One day, a fellow worker ­ there with his infant son (for some reason) ­is killed and Plainview adopts the boy, H. W. (Dillion Freasier) for no other reason than to have a cute face to show while he cons the public (see "Paper Moon").

These are some of the movie's best scenes, with Plainview - and H.W. in tow - visiting backwoods bergs and convincing a gullible populace into signing away land rights for a fraction of what they were worth. Plainview, with a sinister soft-spoken demeanor plays psychological games until the rubes are all but ready to GIVE him the oil rights in perpetuity.

Several years later, a visitor tells Plainview about a ranch in California that is soaking in oil, so Pop and son head out there, under the pretense of hunting quail. There they meet the Sunday family, addled dad, Abel (David Willis), a few non-descript females and an Evangelist son, Eli (Paul Dano, "Little Miss Sunshine").

Plainview and Eli do not hit it off at all, and this is the conflict that sets up the second act. It doesn't take much to finagle Abel out of the Sunday Ranch, as well as the surrounding property, but several tragedies cause many in the town ­ especially the young preacher ­ to wonder if they made the right move in letting Plainview into their midst.

When H.W. is rendered deaf in an explosion and disastrous fire, we wonder if the whole enterprise is worth it.

Up until this point, I was willing to go along with this film as not only a historical drama relating the days of the early oil industry, as well as a chronicle of rural religious fervor, sort of "Oklahoma Crude" meets "The Apostle."

The problem is, the picture does not continue to walk that thin line. We are now subjected to scene after scene of Plainview¹s descent into madness and murder ­ but with little or no motivation for either.

For example, he beats Eli severely and mocks his church; meets a man who claims he¹s his brother; abandons H.W. and generally spirals out of control.

He's business savvy, however, and plans to build a pipeline to transport his vast oil reserves to the coast (thus eliminating the cost of railroad shipping). To do this, though, he has to build through a local hermit's (Hans Howes, "Seabiscuit") land.

The only way to accomplish this is to humble himself before Eli and the congregation and be baptized, obviously a fate worse than death to Plainview who seems to have no morals, whatsoever.

Now that he¹s joined the church and gotten his pipeline built, does he enjoy even one iota of his success? Absolutely not.

In one of Day-Lewis' many monologues, he gives us his motivation for being such a bastard, "I do not just want to succeed, I do not want anyone else to succeed."

Still, that does not explain his psychotic, murderous frenzy, and the longer the film goes on, the less cohesive it became.

I can accept his tirades early on, and even a bit of his unmotivated violence near the middle of the film, but Anderson pushes things to the extreme limit. He's even admitted that he watched "Treasure of the Sierra Madre" before beginning to film "Blood" - yet he still did not learn anything about coherent film-making.

Friends, this is by far one of the most depressing and oppressive films of the year. In fact, it makes "No Country For Old Men" look like "Mary Poppins."

Then, at the conclusion, after watching more than two-plus hours of this evil, hateful man succeed over and over again, we're treated to another brutal, pointless murder -­ this one coming out of nowhere.

Like "The Last King of Scotland," in which Forrest Whittaker won the Best Actor award, this is another performance-driven, but deeply-flawed motion picture.

Day-Lewis will certainly be nominated for this, and he may actually win, but that does not mean one will enjoy the experience of watching that performance.

We see the protagonist's downfall after what happened to his son. From then on, he begins to act in a totally inconsistent and unpredictable way, but always aiming at the prosperity of the company.

But that's not the point! That's not the big picture.

It doesn't matter what actually happened for him to start to get out of control. It could have been the son's deafness, it could have been his greed; what really matters and what the film shows, that is:

THE COMPLEXITY OF HUMAN BEING!

All this complexity actually comes from the total lack of self-knowledge. And the movie shows just that. We spectators are also unpredictable. Some more, some less. And there are some, like the protagonist, who are sick people who refuse to look inwards, so they externalize their suffering to others. The film is ultimately about the disease that is self-ignorance. And no matter how much money you have, you will still suffer...

A few months ago I saw the trailer to There Will Be Blood, at first I was a little put off, it looked very strange and a typical drawn out drama. But then a little later, I saw a different trailer that was much better and looked more interesting. So now it had all this hype and is now nominated for 7 Oscars, including best picture, finally it came to theaters in my home town and my mom and I just saw it. Now, I'm just going to get a complaint out, I think this movie was still a little drawn out, it kind of took on a Kubrick type of feel with the first twenty minutes that had no dialog. But that was the only thing that threw me off. While I'm not as in love with this movie as much as everyone else is, There Will be Blood is going to be a sure classic down the line. The direction, the acting, the script, the sets, everything about this film was done beautifully and shows the utter greed and madness that can turn men into monsters.

Daniel Plainview is an oil man, he's in the business with his son, H.W., and he goes around buying land very cheaply, and makes thousands and thousands of dollars when he strikes oil. But when he comes a town called Little Boston led by the tip of a boy named Paul, he buys the land promising the church that he will donate five thousand dollars to it. Eli, the leader of the church, claims he is a prophet and goes to the extreme to prove so with his followers. When Daniel's team is draining oil, his son is blasted away from an explosion of oil and looses his hearing, Daniel at this point just goes mad and meets a man who claims to be his brother, but he later finds out that this man lied to him. He abandons his son and is loosing all sanity, but when the church comes back to him, he claims he is saved. Years later though, he goes from business man to monster and is going to "drink Eli's milk shake", you'll see what I mean when you see the film.

There Will Be Blood is a film of utter perfection, the reason why I'm rating it so high is because it is a perfectly made film. There's nothing wrong with it, when I said it's a little drawn out, it's just my opinion. But Daniel Day Lewis pulls in a flawless performance and became Daniel Plainview, especially the end, he pulled in such a chilling side and didn't over do the dialog, which I'm sure any other actor would have done. But one performance I am particularly impressed with is Paul Dano's as Eli/Paul, Eli really got to me and was incredible during his sermons, he held his own up to Lewis. He's come a long way since the silent rebel in Litte Miss Sunshine. There Will Be Blood is a GOOD movie, I mean good in the highest regards, because how many of us can say when a film is just utterly good? Not too often. There Will Be Blood is going to be a good contender this year for the Oscars, but we'll just have to see who'll take the best picture award, because we have some good films that are competing.

10/10

In 1898, the lonely mining explorer Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) finds silver nuggets in the shaft and a couple of years later her is in drilling business. When the young man Paul Sunday (Paul Dano) sells the information that there is oil in the lands of his family in Little Boston, California, Daniel travels with his son H. W. and buys the ranches in the area. He finds oil and brings prosperity to the locals and increases his fortune. Along the years, Daniel builds an empire but H. W. loses his audition; he meets a man that tells that he is his step brother; he faces the opposition of the preacher Eli Sunday (Paul Dano) from the Church of Third Revelation. The powerful Daniel destroys his competitors but becomes lonely and insane in the end of the 20's.

The overrated "There Will Be Blood" is technically perfect, with awesome performance of Daniel Day-Lewis. Unfortunately the rise of the oil man Daniel Plainview is too long, boring and without emotion. This character is not well developed in the beginning, and during the first fifteen minutes there are no dialogs. The other characters come and go without any development. It would be better off watching the fantastic "Giant" again instead. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Sangue Negro" ("Black Blood")