The Promise of Early California: Unimaginable Riches For Those WIthout Constraints

Rating: 9/10 (22 March 2013)

It seems to me that many critics of this film want it to be High Noon or My Darling Clementine, a traditional western with a linear plot where the good guy wins, want it to be something other than what it is. The title signals a good deal: There Will Be Blood: a certain tip-off to the tone and direction of the plot, a cruel and brutal study of the acquisitive personality.
In the stark, rock-strewn hills of Central California at the turn of the last century, a man, not unlike his financial business counterparts in the early 21st, tries to find meaning in ownership, in denuding the earth of it's riches and turning them into individual wealth--it's an age-old story of the choice between love of family and human consideration and the amassing of great wealth. In the pursuit of power, in this in-depth study of human greed, discriminating viewers will experience a scathing indictment of an individual's detachment from all we like to think of as humane.
The Daniel Day Lewis character, not unlike the more recent financial barons thieves on 21st Century Wall Street, aims to amass millions and keep them. His story, filmed brilliantly against the stark simplicity of once unspoiled land, and underscored by a sensitive, though unconventional musical score, is laid out persuasively: it's likely that another will have a difficult time laying siege to this human engine of destruction.
Performances are unilaterally brilliant in this dark, somber meditation on American history, and while not particularly cheery, such information has no need to be--it is enough that the film can be a motivating and powerful experience.