Written by El Fangorio

Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis), is one evil S.O.B. His quick rise from poor prospector to oil baron has left many a casualty in his wake. He is the type of man who will exploit a child (newcomer Dillon Freasier), claiming him to be his son, to get families to trust him. And once this child becomes a burden, he will move along and find another face to use. He will take advantage of your generosity, trust, and lack of knowledge and when it comes time for payback, he will still drive you into the dirt. He will admit to wrongdoing only to gain back trust, and then when the time is right, he will remind you how foolish you were to believe him.

Eli Sunday (Paul Dano) is a preacher man but is no less corrupt than Plainview. He also has dollar signs in his eyes and when Plainview comes to offer his “help”, he jumps at the chance to make a profit. Under the guise of building a church, his demands for riches far exceed his needs and his delusions of grandeur blur the line between divine intervention and personal gain. He will use his faith to gain support but if given the opportunity to fatten his pockets with a non-believer, he will denounce it without hardly any hesitation.
It is when these two men converge that we are given the timeless epic struggle of Evil against Evil; Money vs. Religion; Oil vs God. No different now than it was over a hundred years ago when this film takes place, the themes at hand are played out with The Good being caught in the crossfire.

An exercise in filmmaking gone by, There Will Be Blood’s deliberate pacing reminded us that it wasn’t that long ago that films weren’t edited with a Cuisinart. Like Kubrick’s before him, Paul Thomas Anderson’s camera lingers on scenes for minutes on end before cutting away, leaving its imagery burned into your memory. His precise mastering of light evokes the past works of Zsigmond, Almendros, and Willis. And like Scorsese, he still accomplishes originality while channeling the masters. The church construction from McCabe and Mrs. Miller, the nocturnal blaze from Days of Heaven, even the bucket spill from Carrie is on hand for those keen enough to notice. It opens like 2001, with its dissolve into landscape and when the titular promise is finally fulfilled, we are reminded of the same film and early man’s first attack with the animal bone.