There Will Be Blood (Two-Disc Special Collector's Edition)

Daniel Day-Lewis was deserving of the Academy Award he received for his portrayal of an intense, driven and obsessive oil man in "There Will Be Blood". The initial stages of the film are a mini-documentary of the dangerous, dirty and labor intensive process of drilling oil wells in early twentieth century California. Day-Lewis's character, Daniel Plainview, strives to become an oil tycoon using strong arm sales pitches to acquire land, relentless effort to drill wells and strategic vision in applying new pipeline technology to bypass the railroad monopoly and deliver his product to market. His nemesis is an equally ambitious pentecostal preacher who manipulates the simple townfolk that ranch the land above Plainview's oil fields. Ultimately both men are destoyed by their respective obsessions.

The flow of the film falters a little at the end. However, Day-Lewis's best performance of his career (surpassing strong performances in "The Age of Innocence" and "Gangs of New York") make this one of the best films of 2007.

The many ways that greed manifests are countless in this film. Virtually no character goes without claim on some level of selfishness when oil is discovered on otherwise useless California properties. The lives of the inhabitants of a small farm community are turned upside down when the reality of what wealth can be gained dawns on them, as well as when they realize the price they will pay to have it. The story is a believable exploitation of the land and lives of those striking out on the American frontier. Central to its conflict are Daniel Plainview, a slick oil prospector with the sincerity of a snake oil salesman, and Eli Sunday, the ambitious young pastor of a struggling country church.

Day-Lewis Truly deserved all the accolades he won for his performance of Daniel Plainview in this film. The range of his skills was wholly evident in this film, from the overall reserved and refined mannerisms of Plainview, to his later explosive and subtly vitriolic snide treatment of others. In truth, every performance in this film was flawless. In particular Paul Dano, Sunday, should have gotten more attention for his supporting role. His passionate sermons were frightening and moving in his ability to swing from demure to suddenly thundering. The physicality he brought to the character was entrancing as much as creepy. I'm excited to think of what work he will do from this point forward.

Overall the direction of the film seemed to be spot-on in delivery. Most impressive to me were the great gaps in dialogue. I'm always impressed when a scene is forced to move forward without speech. That said, I'm not quite sure to what the poor pacing and seeming gaps in sequencing should be attributed. In some places the film moved quite slowly, while sudden artless segués seemed to leave out huge chunks of time and plot development. I also found the score to be extremely distracting throughout most of the film. Indeed it was innovative and not what one would expect in a western... Still, the musical arrangements were not only ill-suited for a lot of the film, but they were flat out too loud in much of it.

All-in-all, the film is well done. It will be a feather in the cap of its cast, even if the final cut was a bit dodgy.

I had to stop watching after 1 hour because the soundtrack was driving me crazy.

It is too loud, the music is totally inappropriate for the scenes being played and it is just plain awful. I have never , ever watched a movie where the score is so distracting and annoying.

If you can turn the sound off and lip-read, then for all I know the movie might be OK.

That the "critics" will eat up. Only the performances of Daniel Day-Lewis as Daniel Plainview and Paul Dano as Eli Sunday save "There Will Be Blood" from being a terrible film. Director Paul Thomas Anderson empties out a bag of tricks in order to make this movie appeal to award-giving crowd, thus eliminating the interests of most movie-goers. Lewis is a greedy, driven oilman intent on getting the most profit from his victims by using his own down-to-earth sales pitch and cute son. Dano plays a preacher intent on doing the same thing, but through conning the crowd as a fire and brimstone preacher. The two lock horns when Plainview buys Sunday's family farm from his father at a bargain and then blowing of Eli and his requests for money for the church.

The film runs about an hour too long and is littered throughout with long shot sequences, erratic music and, in actuality, very little blood. Many have accused Anderson of either stealing from Stanley Kubrick or paying homage to him through this film. Either way, he's no Stanley Kubrick.

Lewis and Dano play their respective characters very well. Plainview is a complete jerk, even to his son. There is a very matter-of-factness in Lewis' delivery of lines that makes the character worth struggling through the plodding script to see. Dano's Sunday is just as vicious, but in a much more sinister and silent way. Only when he's preaching does he really raise his voice. He also has a violent streak, as the viewer will witness during an interaction with his father.

Overall, this film is average. There is nothing entirely terrible about it but there's nothing entirely great either. Dano and Lewis do great jobs with what they're given, but it's not enough to give "There Will Be Blood" more than three stars. Recommended as a rental, unless you believe that every film that's ever won some type of award truly deserved it.

Blood, oil and religion seem to be the heated topics for this version of Upton Sinclair's novel "Oil", and the presentation is starkly realistic from beginning to end, with DANIEL DAY-LEWIS giving another one of his towering performances in the central role of a corrupt, guilt-ridden man who can't talk about his evil deeds.

His antagonist is a preacher (PAUL DANO) of hellfire and damnation, played with an oily mixture of naiveté and money madness, who wants his fair share of the wealth on his doorstep. It's really the battle between these two men that grips most of the story and leads to a startling climax.

While all the performances are valid enough, it's a shame to see CIARIN HINDS so wasted in a role that barely gives him a chance to utter more than a few lines as a steadfast friend. More prominent in the supporting cast are DILLON FREASIER as the boy adopted by Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) when his real father is killed in a mining accident toward the beginning of the story. The boy is led to believe that he is the real son, only because Day-Lewis wants to use him and his innocent face as a way to secure deals. When the boy is a grown man and wants to move away with his new bride, Day-Lewis ruthlessly exposes the truth about him being an orphan and banishes him from his life with hateful curses.

All of this is never fully explained, but we do know that he has a hatred for most people which he openly admits to a man who poses as his long lost brother Henry (KEVIN J. O'CONNOR). Here too, we can sense a dangerous relationship built on lies and moving toward a violent climax.

DANIEL DAY-LEWIS inhabits his role with great intensity and although he is said to base his speech pattern on John Huston, he looks and sounds more like he's chanelling Walter Huston as he appeared in "Treasure of the Sierra Madre" as the old prospector. There are moments when his expression reflects the sort of penetrating gaze and wicked gleam in his eyes that Walter Huston had. It's almost uncanny. At any rate, Day-Lewis certainly deserved his Best Actor Oscar for this gripping film, stark but relentlessly moving and sometimes emotionally draining to watch.