Rating: R
Genre:
Drama
Release Date: 04/08/2008
Distributor/Studio: Paramount
Writer-director
Paul Thomas Anderson steps outside his contemporary world of dysfunctional Angelenos to explore a very different dysfunctional man -- an oil pioneer whose trailblazing spirit is equaled only by his murderous ambition.
There Will Be Blood is
Anderson's loose adaptation of the novel
Oil! by
Upton Sinclair, and it focuses its attentions on
Daniel Plainview (
Daniel Day-Lewis), a failed silver miner who happens upon black gold during a disastrous excavation that ends in a broken leg. Pulling himself up from the bowels of the earth, both literally and metaphorically,
Plainview embarks on a systematic and steadfast approach to mastering the oil business. Using plain-spoken and straightforward language, and accompanied by his young son,
H.W. (
Dillon Freasier),
Plainview launches a campaign to convince small-town property owners they should let him drill their land. Without him, they won't have the equipment to access the profit beneath their feet. He builds an empire this way -- and gradually becomes obsessed with the intrinsic value of power, growing increasingly irascible and paranoid in the process.
Plainview meets his match in
Eli Sunday (
Paul Dano), a teenage preacher in the small California town of Little Boston, whose brother tipped
Plainview off to the town's plentiful supply of untapped oil. To fully reap the benefits of the land,
Plainview must suffer the opposing whims of this "prophet," whose legitimacy is questionable at best. And it's unclear either man is prepared to pay the humiliating price the other wants to exact.
There Will Be Blood features an anachronistic percussive soundtrack by
Radiohead's
Jonny Greenwood, and it was shot in the same town where the
James Dean epic Giant was filmed.
~ Derek Armstrong, All Movie Guide
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