Unforgettable from start to finish

Rating: 10/10 (9 February 2008)

My reasoning for watching There Will Be Blood is the same as the reasoning for watching No Country for Old Men a month or so ago. A stark and brutal-looking film comes along, wins almost universal praise wherever I look and draws awards and nominations like ducks to water. Seeing as how much I enjoyed No Country, I wondered how exactly There Will Be Blood would stack up against it. Better? Worse? Equal? Only one way to find out.
There Will Be Blood is a much more straightforward character study than No Country for Old Men. Daniel Day-Lewis as Plainview, the humble miner turned ruthless entrepreneur, is just as engaging and mesmerising as everyone has made him out to be. There's nothing I can say about his combination of method acting and research that hasn't been mentioned in any other review. It's sublime. He's a rougher, tougher Charles Kane whose every redeeming feature is actually part of what makes him so menacing.
Now that I've got the obligatory Day-Lewis reference out of the way, now onto the rest of the film. The only other PTA film I've seen is Boogie Nights, which sounds like a far cry from There Will Be Blood, and in many ways it is (although I did notice similar use of long takes of dialogue). The rest of the film is an experience I'd best describe as "visceral". Despite the title, there is very little actual bloodshed, but what there is hits you hard and unexpectedly. The film even manages to generate a few moments of tension that get under your skin in a good way. Hell, there's even a couple of laugh-out-loud moments (this may sound odd, but I laughed more during There Will Be Blood than I did during Juno).
The film rumbles along at a peculiar pace, from the 2001-style opening to an unforgettable conclusion. In between, your attention is captivated by Plainview and his world, a world of greed, lies, hard work, inconveniences and, of course, blood.
Any assessment I make of There Will Be Blood always comes back to asking myself whether it's better than No Country for Old Men. Although the two have very little in common, they're both excellent, and it's tough to decide which one to give the edge to. It will be interesting to see how they fare at the Oscars, especially against each other. There Will Be Blood was an excellent film, and not just solely on the back of Day-Lewis's performance. It's a gripping experience, and will constantly surprise up until the bitter end.