There Will Be Awards

Rating: 8/10 (4 December 2007)

I am going with Paul Thomas Anderson's latest, more mature work as the best American film showing this year, certainly guided and downright anchored by Mr. Daniel Day-Lewis in another legendary performance of screen-shattering proportions. I will hear of many accusing this master character actor of overdoing it at times, serenading the camera with eyes viewers needn't peer too closely into lest our own humanity become compromised. The truth is, for every over-the-top scene which almost always remains justifiable in Day-Lewis's astonishing hands, observant viewers will be equally if not largely rewarded by the boiling subtleties which ripple throughout, just beneath this menacing surface of a man.
As engaging a character study the movie feels (and this it firmly remains right up until an overworked finale), There Will Be Blood shines equally as bright as a brave new step for period westerns. Not in some time has fictionalized American history been so bold with creative and thematic assertion, yet accessible enough to render this harrowing study into greed without generation, and one for the books.