There Will Be Blood

While I'm a little late on this one (since I saw it a month ago in theaters) I just thought I would go through with a review anyways in honor of "Oscar Season". There Will Be Blood is loosely based on "Oil!", the Upton Sinclair novel. The film is extremely dark and dismal, looking into the cut-throat (literally) dealings of the oil trade in the early 1900s.

Daniel Day Lewis leads the film with an incredible performance as Daniel Plainfield, the twisted, troubled, ruthless businessman as he ascends from a struggling prospector to an affluent tycoon. On a side note for those of you who missed it, he was nominated for and won Best Actor this year. Getting back to the film, Plainfield discovers vast fields of oil buried underneath the property of some simple, country farmers and looks to buy the land at "Quail-Hunting" prices in order to exploit it for profit, but the Eli Paul Sunday (Paul Dano), a young preacher, is wise to Plainfield's plans and forces him to support his church.

The film centers about Plainfield, the unusual story of his "son", and his conflicts with the land and the people of his new vast "ocean of oil". The film follows him through his development and exploitation, while dealing with his competitors and Eli all the while. As the movie goes on we learn more about his troubled past as he struggles with insanity.

Lewis and Dano really make this one of the best films of 2007. The acting is incredible, and the story is a deep look into the scarcely-seen vicious nature of oilmen during America's early years. This is a must-see, Daniel Day Lewis seems to limit himself to a movie every 5 years, and as usual it's worth the wait every time.



Here's an infamous scene from the film where Eli comes to Plainfield for money at the end of the film, if you haven't seen it this might be a spoiler.