Movie Review: There Will Be Blood

Director Paul Thomas Anderson came to fame 10 years ago with a pair of movies with great ensemble casts, many ongoing and intersecting story lines, and full of unconventional ideas (frogs falling from the sky anyone?) all brought together with huge emotional swings and finishes you remembered. Unfortunately the guy who directed Boogie Nights and Magnolia, and even Punch Drunk Love which allowed Adam Sandler to display his dramatic chops, is not quite the same guy who directed There Will Be Blood. He's moved from being the next Robert Altman to trying to be Orson Welles.

Not that There Will Be Blood isn't good, it's just a much more scaled down and tightly shot and told film than Anderson's previous efforts. Fortunately Anderson was able to get Daniel Day-Lewis to play the lead role of turn of the century Oilman Daniel Plainview, one of the 10 most evil, callous, hateful, mean, spiteful, driven and successful son's of bitches to ever grace the screen. All the hype you have heard about Day-Lewis's performance are bang on. This is the best performance of the past 10 years and he absolutely carries this movie and Anderson is smart enough to let him do it. He's supported by a great performance by Paul Dano who plays the split personality religious con man Eli/Paul Sunday who is every bit as deceptive and corrupt as Plainview and brings Plainview and his son H.W. to Northern California to drill in his family's oil rich land. Dano was a big surprise to me because although I thought he was great in last year's Little Miss Sunshine, I didn't think he could share the screen with Day-Lewis but he more than holds his own in there scenes together.

The tension and relationship between Plainview and Eli is what drives the plot of the movie that just moves far too slowly. But then again when there isn't a word said for the first 10 minutes of a movie you know the emotional climax may just never come. Numerous times the actions of Plainview lead you to assume something big is about to happen but the movie just keeps chugging along without clarifying or concluding certain events.

What the movie really amounts to is a 21st century Citizen Kane with the same familial issues and character traits driving Kane and Plainview. There a couple of scenes which show Plainview really just wants to have a relatively peaceful life when he can finally sell off his oil assets and he continuously speaks of just taking care of his family. However in the end he becomes an even more bitter, lonely and angry old man sitting in his massive mansion. He essentially does everything but whisper Rosebud.

With an ending that will frustrate as many people as it will please There Will Be Blood is the type of movie that will be more appreciated as the years go by. In fact 10 years from now most 1st year film students are going to be writing essays comparing and contrasting the motivations of Daniel Plainview and Charles Foster Kane. In the meantime sit back and enjoy a great character played by an actor who if he was more prolific would be considered among the best 10 of all time.

Rating 7.5/10