There Will Be Blood - 2007

There Will Be Blood is one of those rare gems that you are atonished by its greatness, its acting, its art design, music, cinematography, script and story. You can nitpick your way through the film an entire ten times and still not find a fault worth meaning. Paul Thomas Anderson knew what he was doing, and one of the biggest snubs of the century would have to be leaving him out of Best Director. It certainly is not my favorite film of all time, but I really don't think I could ask for a more perfect piece of art then this. Excellent in every sense of the word, There Will Be Blood hits the viewer hard across the head with its obvious message, greed and wealth can come at a very high price.

The film begins with a not yet successful oil prospector, Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) trying to make his name in the world. Daniel has a problem though, other than his son he hates everyone and everything in existence, which is part of the reason for his success. Daniel does not only want wealth, he wants to see all of his competitors burn in the ground. He uses his son to create the image of a family man, and in turn gains the trust and respect of the locals who allow him to drill all around their homes. But as Daniel climbs the charts his character becomes more and more disgusting, and he pays the price of his past deeds.

Well, for starters, I am going to try and keep this review much shorter then I usually do, because I have very little time these days. As you can see, the plot and story of There Will Be Blood is nothing special. In fact, it easily could have been another well acted but boring drama with sloppy direction. But it isn't. surprisingly, the director is not the biggest part of the the film's excellence, the movie was nothing short of fantastic team work, starting with the cinematography. It was a major reason to why it was not dull, the look of the film is so beautiful, and at times haunting, it perfectly captures the audience into the film.

There Will Be Blood is an example of doing the little things in film making right before you do the big. Music is such an under appreciated aspect of film that people over look. Think about it, people constantly rave about how much they enjoyed the music, but not often do I see someone actually saying the music contributed to how good the film itself was. They almost think of it as a plus, but bad music certainly would not be something worth taking off for. But I disagree, along with the cinematography, the musical score greatly helped There Will Be Blood be what it was supposed to be, creating the proper feel for the movie. I mean, what would 2001 be without its score? Exactly my point.

I don't even know how much I want to talk about it, Daniel Day-Lewis blew me away, and that is all there is to it. He would absolutely be in my top 20 greatest performances in film history, as he truly became the character he was meant to play. Paul Dano, Oscar worthy? without a doubt in my mind. He might not have deserved the win, but don't let that make you overlook his performance. No one else s really worth spot lighting, but all in all a great job by the cast.

Overall, there is an endless amount of words to describe how great There Will Be Blood is, I even thought about getting a Dictionary for this review. If you want to be a proper film buff, start your education of the 21st century right here.