There Will Be Blood

There Will Be Blood is the story of oil-man Daniel Plainview, played by Daniel Day-Lewis, Gangs of New York, who is so utterly consumed by being a self made success that he cannot see anything else and cares little for the collateral damage that results from his ambition. Plainview starts out as a man operation prospecting for precious metals as he begins to make money he adds to his staff and moves from silver and gold to the black gold this country has come to rely on. Plainview describes himself as a straigh talking oil-man who cares about family, he has unofficially adopted the son of one of his deceased employees, and faith. Plainview is an experts at exploiting the emmotions of small towns that are eager to reap the benefits that come with have an oil mill on their land. Plainview would not be able to do what he does if it were not some a least a small amount of greed on behalf of the towns folk, but his unapologetic tenacity steam rolls anyone that would try to stand against him or next to him for that matter.

My feelings for the story and movie at large aside, enough cannot be said for Day-Lewis' performance. It is not difficult to see why he takes so much time between movies, there is no Daniel Day-Lewis on screen there is only Daniel Plainview. There are few if any actors that are more committed to their craft. Day-Lewis becomes his roles, he eats sleeps and breaths his characters and this performance is another knotch on his belt, another example of what the highest level of acting looks and feels like.

As a movie There Will Be Blood got a little too full of itself for me. It like Anderson, writer and director, was so proud of this story he did not feel the need to explain much of anything. Like for example were the Sunday boys twins, we assume so, how did Plainview deduce his brother was a fake, did Plainview care more about oil than his son. I understand that many of these questions were probably answered and I am just too slow to pick up the sublety of the story, but did everyhing have to be cryptic and understood. However as pretencious as the movie felt at times it was not enough for me to be too harsh. This was sophisticated story telling and it is important to have this kind of varitey in the type of product Hollywood produces.

GRADE - A-