There Will Be Blood, 2007

SPOILER ALERT..... Daniel Day-Lewis plays an Oil Tycoon named Daniel Plainview. Plainview started out as a Silver Prospector, where he broke his leg in the mines. He later became an oil prospector, where he really made his fortunes. Plainview is a bitter man with no love life. A worker dies and Plainview takes the man's orphaned son and raises him as his own. H.W. is his name. Plainview uses H.W. to present a pleasing facade of a "Family Business Man, making it easier to talk people into letting him lease their property so that he can sink some oil wells. A young man (Paul Sunday) comes to Plainview one day and tells him about the property his family owns in a little town called Little Boston, tells him about oil on his family property.. Plainview travels there, meets the (Sunday Family) and pays the family a knocked down price for the lease, sinks some wells, and becomes extremely rich. He meets (Eli Sunday) Paul's twin brother, both played by Paul Dano. Eli is the preacher of the "Church of the Third Revelation". The two men, Plainview and Eli, have a hate-hate relationship that plays itself out in the final scene of the movie. This is a fine movie. Plainview's adopted son loses his hearing, a fellow comes into town pretending to be Plainview's half brother, of course Plainview sees through his charade and puts a bullet in his brain-pan for trying to pull the wool over his eyes. And all the time you are watching one of the finest performances on film, Daniel Day-Lewis is pure genius in this role, even if it reminds you of "Bill the Butcher" in (Gangs of New York) I loved this move, and I gave it 5***** STARS.

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I rented this because it received several Oscar nominations (best actor, set direction, cinematography, directing, film editing, best picture, sound editing, writing). While Daniel Day-Lewis delivered a stellar performance and the cinematography was excellent, it wasn't enough to save the show. I found it to be dark and depressing and many of its characters lacked redemption value. Perhaps it was an accurate depiction of the era but I felt the movie was missing any qualities that make similar stories riveting.

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I went in to this film expecting to really like it but came back out of it feeling underwhelmed. The characters are thin (Day-Lewis' character embodies capitalism to the point that it's almost perfectly allegorical) and the directing and scoring are heavy-handed. That's not to say the film is horrible, the cinematography is top notch and the actors do good job with what they're given. More than anything, this film is a victim of its own hype. I went in expecting this transcendent performance that I had been hearing about and instead got a passable, but simplistic, morality play.

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I've never felt so satisfied by a movie that had such real flaws. P.T. Anderson's direction saves this film by infusing every scene with the required intensity to get me through two and a half hours of what could very well be an underdeveloped story. After the movie, I wondered why so many different plotlines were so sparsely written. There's the son's storyline, the conflict between Plainview and the preacher, the long lost brother, and Plainview's conflict with Standard Oil. All of these are intriguing, but none are allowed to take precedence, and, so, the film faces the prospect of hashing out four plots and wrapping them up in an acceptable amount of time. Over 2 hours later, I realized I really didn't understand what made Plainview tick, or why he has such a problem with preacher, Eli Sunday. These issues, while easily sinking most other movies, are overpowered by great actors and Anderson's ability to make every scene seem much more important than it actually is. Style sometimes overcomes a lack of substance. While there are a lot of gaps in the story, this movie still works as a character study of Plainview who succeeds only because he is willing to brutally sacrifice himself and others.

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Few directors today can match the vision and ambition of PT Anderson. I've loved all of his films until "There Will Be Blood." Yes it's shot beautifully. Yes the music is stirring and dissonant, fitting perfectly with each frame. Yes DDL deserved the Oscar he won for best actor. However the story revealed itself so early. I knew what was going to happen and when it did I was not surprised. "Blood," did not have those "PT Anderson" moments his earlier films had, those unexpected moments that leave you startled and shaken. I knew Plainview would abandon his son, not once but twice. I knew Plainview had it out for Eli the entire so when he kills him at the end I wondered what took so long. In many ways the film reminded me of, "The Aviator," showing how greed and wealth corrupt and ruin a man. Yes this is a good film, but I think PT Anderson has many great films in him and "Blood" is one helping him get there.

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