big movie with great performance by Daniel Day-Lewis

Rating: 8/10 (7 July 2013)

"There Will Be Blood" is a 2007 film directed by P.T. Anderson and starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Paul Dano.
It's the story of an oil tycoon, starting out in the early days of the century and going through to about 1929.
Day-Lewis is Daniel Plainview, and in the beginning, we see him searching for oil with a team of men. I have to inject something here: what I loved about the beginning was the lack of dialogue. Whenever we see westerns or pioneer films or whatever, characters speak as we do today. However, I believe that miners, trappers, traders, gunslingers et al. didn't do much talking, in fact, they were probably just one or two steps up from neanderthals, without much education, and living somewhat isolated lives. The beginning of this film captured this beautifully as the men worked side by side, saying very little.
Plainview becomes wealthy - he seems charming as he travels around with his son H.W. (Dillon Freasier) but he's out to get land as cheaply as he can, and he makes promises he doesn't keep. He ultimately comes up against the Sunday family, whose land he buys, but one of the sons is a preacher, Eli (Dano), and the two come into conflict immediately.
There's not much plot here; it's the story of a morally bankrupt man who becomes more and more morally bankrupt and richer as time goes on, more of a drunk, and more isolated. He abandons H.W. after he goes deaf as the result of an accident, but he's shamed into retrieving him by Eli making him confess his sins in church before he's baptized - the price Plainview has to pay in order to get the Bandy land, the last holdout.
The film is propelled by the performance of Daniel Day-Lewis, the young gay lad of My Beautiful Laundrette, the star of My Left Foot, Lincoln, the hunk in Last of the Mohicans - the man's range is unbelievable. He gives a terrifying performance. Like his performance did in Gangs of New York, Day-Lewis scared the hell out of me as this volatile man who would just as soon kill you as talk to you. It's searing, it's gut-wrenching and ultimately devastating.
Without an actor of his caliber, I can't see this film being successful - it's too long, for one thing, and there's just not that much story. Paul Dano is very good. I've read that some felt he wasn't dynamic or charismatic enough as the preacher, but I think the point was to be very different from Plainview in personality.
All in all, worth it for Daniel Day-Lewis, as are most films in which he appears.