In a truly exceptional year for films, There Will Be Blood"" is a colossal achievement, by far the most devastating film yet by director Paul Thomas Anderson.
Daniel Day-Lewis, in an awe-inspiring performance, plays the role of Daniel Plainview, a Texas silver miner who discovers oil in one of his mines and decides to start a career in the oil industry.
After an on-site accident claims the life of one of his workers, Plainview decides to adopt the man's orphaned infant son as his own and names him H.W. (Dillon Freasier). Using young H.W. to bolster the public image of his company as a family business, Plainview moves to Little Boston based on the advice of a young man named Paul Sunday (Paul Dano) whose family lives there.
Upon arrival, Plainview sets about out-doing all his corporate competitors in securing oil wells and pipelines. He soon becomes a powerful figure both in the oil business and in the community of the small town.
Along the way, H.W. loses his hearing in a tragic crane explosion and a mysterious man (Kevin J. O'Connor) claiming to be Henry, Daniel's half-brother, arrives in town to join the business.
But the primary source of conflict for Plainview comes from Paul's brother, Eli Sunday (also played by Paul Dano), the local preacher, whose fiery sermons have made him a community leader. Eli feels threatened by Plainview's burgeoning success in Little Boston and attempts to take a cut of Plainview's profits.
In a story spanning 30-some years, their continuing struggle for power and domination leads to a shocking - and yes - bloody conclusion.
If ""Boogie Nights"" and ""Magnolia"" established Paul Thomas Anderson's scope, ambition and ability to get great performances from actors, and ""Punch-Drunk Love"" showed his capacity to make a more focused, concise film, then ""There Will Be Blood"" is his Kubrickian masterpiece, virtuosic and oddly disturbing.
Inspired by Upton Sinclair's 1927 novel ""Oil!"", Anderson wrote and directed this driving, engrossing film with some truly phenomenal performances. Dano has a gentle, child-like voice but brings impressive energy to his role as a preacher who is as jealous as he is devout. Freasier, an amateur young Texan, is a convincing, integral part of the film as the exploited son, and Day-Lewis deserves all the superlatives thrown his way for another landmark performance as the savage, misanthropic oil entrepreneur driven by greed and competition. His physicality, voice, mannerisms and fierce emotion combine to create a singularly, fascinating character.
Another major player in the film's success is Jonny Greenwood - of Radiohead fame - whose stirring score adds tension and devilish mystery to already gripping material. All five of these contributors and the fine supporting cast collaborate to make a film that is achingly human yet punctuated with scenes of shocking violence. The film is an in-depth character study of a man consumed by greed and hate who seeks to destroy everyone in his path, finally facing the embodiment of self-righteous religious zeal.
""I have a competition in me,"" says Plainview. ""I want no one else to succeed."" With ""Blood,"" Anderson has made a peerless film - a startling, ferocious original.
