"There Will Be Blood"

Ordinarily,  you might not be very excited about a story set in the early 1900s about a man building a business. But with all of the drama caused by BP a few years ago an epic drama about a ruthless man building an oil empire at all costs begins to eclipse even the latest summer blockbuster sequels.

Beginning in 1898 and spanning a little over a quarter of a century, There Will Be Blood is a poetically titled character study set against the backdrop of California during the oil boom. The story centers around Daniel Plainview, a silver miner with unlimited ambition and an equally boundless distrust of other people to match. When Daniel switches his sights from silver to oil his cynicism and hatred grows almost as quickly as his fortune. His affection it seems is reserved exclusively for his adopted son and his half-brother, with whom he is soon reunited. For awhile anyway. Plainview goes on to match wits with a young preacher, other oil tycoons and the earth itself in his relentless pursuit of more power and wealth. He allows nothing and no one to stand in his way and he forgives nothing and no one who defies him. The eerie score is the perfect compliment to the increasingly more sinister main character.

Loosely based on the 1927 novel Oil!, which itself is loosely based on real life oil baron Edward L. Doheny, the movie provokes an inevitable second glance at  such legendary business titans as Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller and John Jacob Astor. You have to wonder, Is this the kinda guy who built modern America? Is this really what capitalism is all about? And just how much blood was there in real life? Try not to think about the Gulf Coast or the gigantic corporations that may or may not be responsible for the current state of the economy as you watch.

Daniel Day Lewis was awarded the Oscar for Best Actor, Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Award in 2008 for his masterful portrayal of misanthropic magnate, Plainview. The film itself received numerous awards including 8 Academy Award nominations, winning two.

For you diehard hood or gangster movie fans, rest assured this story is all about greed, ambition, hate, violence, murder, money, power and respect. Don’t miss one of the most abrupt endings in cinema and keep your ears open for when Plainview utters the film’s iconic line, “I drink your milkshake!” Though There Will Be Blood is an epic drama, it is worthy of its title. Serial killer Jigsaw from the Saw movies made it a hot line and director Wes Anderson made it a hot film.

Originally Posted 3/24/17