There Will Be Blood

Released: December 26, 2007

Studio: Paramount Vantage, Miramax Films

Genre: epic period drama

Box Office (numbers in millions):

Domestic: 40.22 Worldwide: 76.18

Adjusted for Inflation:

Domestic: -- Worldwide: --

Directing: Paul Thomas Anderson

Screenwriting: Paul Thomas Anderson

Starring: Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Dano, Kevin J. O'Connor, Ciarán Hinds, Dillon Freasier

Review:

There Will Be Blood is an epic period drama written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. The story, loosely based on Upton Sinclair’s 1927 novel Oil!, follows Daniel Plainview (Day-Lewis), “a silver miner-turned-oilman…as he embarks on a ruthless quest for wealth during the California oil boom between the late 19th and early 20th centuries.” ^WK

“There Will Be Blood is emphatically not an easy watch…It won’t come to you immediately, but this may be a masterpiece.” ^E08 “Anderson gives the film a bit of a horror-movie vibe throughout and Day-Lewis delivers such a deliciously monstrous performance,” ^E18 “even by his standards.” ^E08 Plainview is “a man of impressive grit and untrammelled greed who pulls himself up by the bootstraps to turn from lone prospector to oil mogul.” ^E08 “It’s a chilling portrait, and one which, while bafflingly evil, somehow never strays from believability.” ^E08

After a “long, wordless opening…the central conflict begins. Ten years have passed, and Plainview is pitching for the purchase of oil rights in a new town.” ^E08 He finds himself competing with Eli Sunday (Dano), a charismatic preacher who “makes an alternative offer of redemption and deliverance from the hardships of frontier life, through faith rather than wealth. His is a spitting, shrieking brand of religion that bullies belief from his congregation, squeezing it out of them with the power of his oratory and the (apparently) unshakeable conviction with which he believes. The clash between these two titanic egos is the heart of the film.” ^E08