an unconventionally rewarding film

Rating: Null/10 (15 February 2012)

"There Will be Blood" has a minimalist score, long stretches with no dialogue, little in the way of action, and an ending that eschews traditional resolution or dramatic catharsis, yet it remains an intensely gripping film.
It a character study of a charismatic yet thoroughly unlikable man. He methodically works towards goal only to have it destroy him when he accomplishes it. Daniel Day-Lewis plays Daniel Plainview a 19th century silver miner who becomes an oil tycoon trying to amass enough wealth to separate himself from the world that he dislikes. Over the course of his life he picks up a brother, a son, and a nemesis only to discard or destroy them in terrible and almost off hand ways.
If the movie sounds unconventionally rewarding, that is because it is. It is less a conventional narrative than an exploration of the nature of a particular man. It is a film that both requires and rewards patience.