Review of There Will Be Blood (2007) by Michael D — 25 Nov 2015

Sometimes an actor can take a good movie and make it great. And then sometimes an actor can take a good movie and make it incredible. The latter is the case with There Will Be Blood. Take out Daniel Day Lewis from the grand scheme of things for a second and look at the movie at its basic premise.

A story about an up and coming oil prospector in the early 1900's with religious undertones throughout the story. That has "I'm going to fall asleep" written all over it. Now we throw perhaps the greatest actor of the generation, Daniel Day Lewis, into the mix and we take a rather basic and boring concept and turn it into something exciting and downright incredible.

Paul Thomas Anderson takes the helm for There Will Be Blood and Johnny Greenwood (radiohead) takes control of the eery off tune music for the movie. We are thrust into the world of Daniel Plainview (played by Daniel Day Lewis) and his rise to power in the oil industry.

It is a brutal rise to the top for this character. He is ruthless, cutthroat and downright barbaric on his way to getting what he wants. Played to perfection by Day Lewis who earned his second of three Oscars for acting for this movie.

The characters entire persona can be summed up by one quote he utters while in deep thought " I hate most people" Paul Dano gives a very good performance as a young priest in a tiny village where Plainview is drilling for oil.

But as we soon find out through the movie everyone is not as pure as they seem. As ruthless as Plainview is in this movie, at least he is up front about it and does not hide his greed. Daniel Day Lewis gives the best performance of his career so far which is saying something, because he always seems to give the best performance of his career in every movie he does.

I cannot leave this review without mentioning the great cinematography and music throughout the entire film. Amazingly visual movie. And Johnny Greenwood does a fantastic job with the music creating a very disturbing eery feel for the entire movie.