A magnificent performance from Day-Lewis in a film that was only about his performance. SOME SPOILERS

Rating: 6/10 (20 January 2008)

I went to see "There Will Be Blood" expecting the best film of year. What I got was a highly absorbing, intriguing and beautifully well-shot first hour before the picture collapsed. When Plainview's son is sent away because of his deafness the only interesting emotional relationship in the story is removed, leaving Day-Lewis and, um...that's it. Even though HW Plainview returns later on, I was so mind-numbingly bored with the total vacuum of any other dynamic relationship that the film was passed saving at this point. When Plainview set up his big Oil plans in Eli Sunday's community, I thought the story would kick on and evolve in some way. Instead it just stagnates. The major problem here is with Paul Dano as Eli Sunday. Dano has performed very well in other movies I've seen him in, and he clearly has a fine talent, but here he is poorly cast. If Eli Sunday had been played by a heavyweight actor of equal power and intensity as Day-Lewis, then the struggle between the different types of greed bound up in the church and business symbolized by Sunday and Plainview respectively would have been more powerful and significant. As it was, the young and innocent looking Dano came across much more as some kind of crazed weirdo than as the spokesman of this community. The moment that summed this up was when Plainview went back on his word to Sunday at the opening of the drilling site and didn't allow him to bless the new project. The close-up on Dano's face revealed nothing of the anger and belligerence that an older actor might have brought to the role. A stronger, more aggressive performance would have ensured that when HW Plainview vanished, the underlying tension at the heart of the film between spirituality and materialism would have been played out as a real battle, rather than the one-sided demolition job Day-Lewis' powerhouse character did on the weak and submissive Sunday. Such a relationship might have provided a better structure in which the story could have grown. The problem that emanated from Dano's casting as Sunday was that there was a giant vacuum in the story that some people clearly thought was adequately filled by a "character-study" of Plainview. Whilst Day-Lewis' performance was sensational-intense, emotionally charged, and so believable, I don't think that any character, however well acted, is interesting enough to justify being the sole subject of a film for an hour and a half. "Into the Wild," a film just as much about the main character as "There Will be Blood" is, benefits from the number of relationships Emile Hirsh's character has along the way, which succeed in creating the tension and dynamism that make the film enjoyable. Here the story didn't go anywhere, and the film didn't really know how to finish itself, ultimately ending rather weakly with the terribly contrived confrontation between Plainview and Sunday. Some people will add to the argument that the film is a fantastic "character study" by talking about its war on terror orientated themes of power, religion, greed etc. etc. If someone can tell me what the point of the allusions to the war on terror business were ("HW" Plainview etc.) then I'll be grateful, because as far as I can see the film raised the fact that greed and religion exist, and then left it at that, smugly thinking that making such clever links to the current political climate is an intrinsically valuable act, and that any development of those themes is entirely unnecessary. Day-Lewis here gives an outstanding performance in a film that suffers hugely from its weak story. A real disappointment.