Legendary performance by Daniel Day-Lewis

Rating: 10/10 (30 January 2008)

I can't say that Daniel Day-Lewis's performance alone made this movie great. The movie was itself great in a lot of ways, including the directing by Paul Thomas Anderson (who I don't believe has made a bad movie to date), the cinematography, and the intriguing storyline. However, I can't think of any other actor who would have done as well in the role of Daniel Plainview. Day-Lewis really moved his actor status up to legendary with this role, and it's a good thing Martin Scorsese talked him out of retirement seven years ago to do "Gangs of New York".
Perhaps the other best things about this movie is that it doesn't follow the typical storyline you would expect from this sort of movie. I expected this movie to be a rise-and-fall story along the lines of "Boogie Nights", where Daniel Plainview works hard to get oil, gets money, and becomes more corrupt. And I thought a subplot involves the Eli Sunday character (played extremely well in an overlooked performance by Paul Dano) would be the moral center of the story who resists corruption. That doesn't exactly happen that way. In fact, without giving anything away, there are more scenes than expected where Daniel Plainview is portrayed as a more noble character than Eli Sunday. Additionally, Daniel Day-Lewis brings an unexpected amount of comic relief to Plainview that not many other actors would be willing to muster.
It's unfortunate that this film is nominated for Best Picture against "No Country for Old Men" and "Juno", both excellent films that I have seen as of January 30th, 2008. Despite this film being 2 1/2 hours long, I enjoyed it all the way through. If it doesn't win Best Picture, Daniel Day-Lewis definitely deserves to win for Best Actor (say that five times fast). Great film overall, and excellent period piece!