Review: "There Will Be Blood"

Name of Film: There Will Be Blood
Release Date: December 26 2007
Trailer: Click here
Starring: Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Dano
Website: therewillbeblood.com
Rating: 7 oil wells out of 10.

I'm pretty sure the only other Daniel Day-Lewis movies I've ever seen was Gangs of New York and he was a total bad-ass in that so- hey! Why not?

(I'll just quickly note that I really liked Paul Dano in Little Miss Sunshine. I thought his part was really well done. I didn't even know he was in this movie until I started watching it.)

I originally thought this movie was a western- damn. Was I wrong. No cowboys in sight- not even a Southern accent. Which, in my opinion, made this movie all that much better.

The first thing I noticed about this film was the creepy music. I don't think I've ever heard music like that in a movie before- but it definitely gave the movie a different feel to it than it might have had otherwise.

There Will Be Blood is the story of Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis), an anti-social "oilman" who locates small towns with lots of oil under the ground. He buys their land and drains the ground dry. The main plot of this movie circles around him finding this one certain small town in California with "an ocean of oil under their feet". Plainview pretends to be a family man for the sake of appearances (even adopting a son, from a former employee who died on the job, and raising him as his own) but despises the idea of religion. The local faith healer (Paul Dano) quickly becomes an enemy of Plainview's.

Let the games begin.

What can I say about this film? The acting is crazy good. The music is eery. Daniel Day-Lewis' character is one that you feel both sympathy and hate for. The movie begins with you wondering, "Oh man. What will he do next?". By the end, you only expect him to do something completely crazy and cold-hearted.

My only complaint is that they didn't show Daniel Day-Lewis bathing in a tub of gold... or oil.