Having come to California at the turn of the twentieth century to find oil, a man and his son are challenged by a preacher's ambitions and other events.
I was pretty impressed with this movie and the acting of Daniel Day-Lewis and the great sets. It was pretty rough at times and the ending was not what I expected. Definitely worth a watch.
1 of 1 member(s) found this review helpful.
James R. (mnjimmy) from FOREST LAKE, MN Reviewed on 6/3/2013...
This was an interesting movie, to say the least. It took a while to figure it all out. I will watch it again to get the full deal. Worth the time to watch.
2 of 4 member(s) found this review helpful.
Rebecca C. (sweetooth) from COLCHESTER, IL Reviewed on 8/30/2010...
This site gives this movie 3 stars, but I give it 5. It's sometimes difficult to watch-the descent of the main character into aloholism and insanity never lets up. Although it's set at the turn of the last century it has some good insight into the soul-dead greed of the Bush era. And Daniel Day-Lewis delivers one of the greatest acting performances I've ever seen. Not an easy movie, but worth the time.
7 of 9 member(s) found this review helpful.
Angela F. from CHARLOTTESVLE, VA Reviewed on 12/6/2009...
This is Day-Lewis chewing up scenery. If only he'd had a director. A self-indulgent aimless waste of your time. Too bad, really.
3 of 15 member(s) found this review helpful.
Cara F. (dichten) from PRT WASHINGTN, WI Reviewed on 11/1/2009...
Within the first fourteen and a half minutes alone one should be able to decide if they will care for this film, as those first fourteen and a half minutes are bereft of dialogue. Save for a few grunts and wails, not a single word is spoken. Why? Because this is a thinking man's movie. One must watch the beginning of this film and pick up on the not so subtle brush strokes of Theme.
Greed. The lust for money, money as power, power corrupting absolutely. From the first, foreboding screech of the violins which thrust us into "There Will Be Blood" we know to watch for the coming darkness -- and, boy, does that darkness creep.
Daniel Day-Lewis brings a masterful performance to this film. The kind of performance which seeps slowly but powerfully, growing ever stronger until that final, climactic moment. This man wields his monumental ability with a skewed grace and killing beauty. He is an actor whose breed is shockingly rare, an endangered species.
Paul Dano is remarkable as Eli Sunday, a preacher whose morals are corrupt at best, appearing black and slick as the oil Daniel is drilling. Dano does not play this role, but consumes it. He becomes Eli, to such a point where it is shocking to me that he was not even nominated for an Oscar. As the film progresses, the insanity and crookedness in Eli, and Daniel, abound and one has to ask: who is good and who is evil?
Without writing an entire synopsis of the film (and giving the entire thing away), I'll conclude with this:
This movie is a beast -- not in length, but in its unrelenting power. It is not for the lighthearted or for anyone who neither appreciates nor understands allegory. This is not a movie plopped into the DVD player to kill time, or to birth background noise for a poker game. This is not something to watch, either, but to experience.
And then when it ends, when it has left you low and bruised and in a marvelous state of awe -- play it again. That's what I did at least, and if you only need to hear one thing let it be that I loved this movie so much that I watched it twice in rapid succession.
13 of 14 member(s) found this review helpful.
Bob N. from CORINNE, UT Reviewed on 10/24/2009...
This movie was a total waste of time I would not recommend it to anyone, I just lost 2 hrs that i will not get back hoping that it would get better but it never did
3 of 15 member(s) found this review helpful.
Matthew E. from FULTON, NY Reviewed on 10/14/2009...
1 of 12 member(s) found this review helpful.
Vanessa V. (sevenspiders) Reviewed on 9/15/2008...
This movie will be known as one of the greats, one for the ages. Like other great films; Citizen Kane, 2001: A Space Odyssey etc, it is not for everyone. The pacing is deliberate, the characters complicated, the music bizarre, the moral of the story cloudy. But what a story.
We follow the career of Daniel Plainview- misanthrope, miser, oil-man- as he gains a fortune and loses everything that makes it worth having. Daniel Day-Lewis' performance is astounding, one of the most complete transformations in modern cinema. He perfectly captures the few moments of peace and humanity that Plainview has before rejecting human-kind as imperfect. And Paul Dano as Plainveiw's nemesis, the self-made (or self-deluded) preacher Eli, holds his own against the veteran actor. On one level, There Will Be Blood can be seen as the struggle between religion and capitalism, a clash of the titans with Plainview and Eli locked in a battle from which neither can back down. Very few films create such perfectly crafted characters with such real, moving and dramatic conflict between them. Their battle is at once epic and relatable as they continue to one-up the other in a series of betrayals and humiliations.
With such over-the-top performances, the whole movie could easily have degenerated into a camp-fest, but the restraint and calm of the cinematography and the deliberate pacing balances everything. Under the painstaking direction of Paul Thomas Anderson the film becomes a series of peaks and valleys, with periods of peace and violence as perfect as a Beethoven symphony.
But again, Beethoven isn't for everyone. And if none of the above appeals to you, by all means, please skip it. At nearly three hours it would be a painful experience to anyone who wasn't in the mood for it. I was awed by There Will Be Blood, I think its one of the greatest American films ever made. But its not the movie for a night of relaxing in front of the tv. There's a time for mindless entertainment, and a time for something more. When you want something more- then give There Will Be Blood a try.
11 of 15 member(s) found this review helpful.
Andrea K. from NEWTON, WV Reviewed on 5/12/2008...
I'm sorry but I did not enjoy this movie.The acting was good however the storyline itself was boring.It is a very long movie and in my opinion not worth all the buzz it has created.
8 of 16 member(s) found this review helpful.
Movie Reviews
There will be hell to pay...
Condor08 | Brawley, CA, USA | 07/08/2010
(5 out of 5 stars)
"This movie is unbelievable! It's a main character that you must-see. Me and my husband could not get over how insane this man was. Ruthless, if you dare get in his way. Great story."
Solid
Cosmoetica | New York, USA | 09/01/2010
(3 out of 5 stars)
"Overall, There Will Be Blood is a film with a good opening, a few good potential moments and scenes (as with the faux brother), but it ends in near disaster. Its ending would rank as one of the worst in history (think Akira Kurosawa's Rashomom) if only the rest of the film had been stronger. Also, in no way, shape, nor form is the film an `epic.' Other than the word `surreal' the term epic may be the most overused and misused word in the arts. An epic is a tale that covers a great deal of history, time, and place. It also delves deeply into the characters and plot. There Will Be Blood is a series of cursory sketches that are meager and often poorly connected. I spoke of the hit and miss cinematography, but the musical scoring to this film is even worse. And, even if one were to put aside the technical lack, and the script problems, there's the acting. It's simply not good. The two main characters, Lewis and Dano have no chemistry, in the sense that their hatred of each other never seems genuine. And, while Dano is a cipher emotionally, Lewis chews scenery even more than he did as Bill The Butcher In Martin Scorsese's Gangs Of New York. Granted, while not a great film, that film was better written than this one, but there is a certain cartoonishness in Lewis's portrayal that neuters all attempt at real drama. One cares not a damn for any of the mannekin-like characters- save perhaps for the faux brother, whose very fakeness was designed merely to show of Lewis's character's rage and psychopathy, but did nothing of the sort. It only made the faux brother's character seem slighter by his casual dismissal from Daniel's life. Also, the tale is both too linear and too sparse in development to have any real poesy. It relies not on characterization but grotesques- they aren't even caricatures. And, after the first fifteen minutes, I kept wondering what a real visionary director like Theo Angelopoulos or Michelangelo Antonioni would have done with this film's premise- even its footage, for quality editing could have severely tightened the film up, and made it less dependent upon overwrought theatrics. In essence, one can tell this was a Hollywood film, even from the first minutes of silence.
There Will Be Blood attempts to be epic, great, and tie in with the current political zeitgeist by showing viewers the beginnings of what caused global warming. Instead, it is a meandering tale that relies on soap operatic tricks (such as Bandy's blackmailing Daniel into Eli's church- why?) that don't even have a payoff, however cheap; as well as being dull and poor in almost every filmic aspect (not unlike its twinned, wildly overpraised critical cousin, the Coen Brothers' No Country For Old Men). That this film got so raved over as a great piece of cinema shows how little critics and filmgoers today understand real art and/or care about it. Which scenario is worse is open for debate. This film's quality isn't."