There Will Be Blood [Blu-ray]
![There Will Be Blood [Blu-ray]](/Images/B0018QCXH8/medium.jpg) | Average Customer Rating: Recommend Studio: Paramount Home Video Release Date: 06/03/2008 Run time: 158 minutes Rating: R… Product details and pricing info |
|---|
364 Customer Reviews Posted
- Entertaining, thoughtful and poignant...
- Whether you are a Lewis fan or not you can not help but enjoy this picture.
The plot is simple enough, but the execution of it is a masterpiece of subtle insight and pristine truthfulness into the human condition.
This is one of the all too infrequent breed of movies which is so multi-faceted in its human element, refined and yet with raw and unfiltered boldness as it lays out emotion and character motivations with unhurried bravery, that it sneaks up on you and surrounds you before you realize it.
Whether to explore the historical perspective, to enjoy the lead actor or simply to revel in the well executed totality of a carefully crafted film--you owe it to yourself to see this movie. - 2008-10-31, 0 of 1 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- Modern mythology
- "There Will Be Blood" is one of those dark, disturbing and insistent stories that compels you to watch, even when you'd rather turn away to a sunnier subject. It reminds me of "Chinatown" with its unsentimental view of the past and sinister subtexts. It's more than a story of greed and commerce in expanding late 19th century America; it traces a man's ambition to get whatever he wants at whatever cost.
Such a universal theme is usually to be found in Shakespeare, and requires an actor with enough emotional heft to pull it off. Daniel Day Lewis is as hard as stone in the role of Daniel Plainview, the driven oil prospector who sacrifices everything on his way up (or is it down?).
The film has a number of scenes that show how far Plainview will go to achieve his dream, but the one that clinched it for me was the oil derrick fire, drawn out in an almost agonizing pace by the director and stoked up by a mesmerizing score. Plainview and his crew, having unplugged an underground cache of oil, scramble to contain a flare-up that threatens to destroy both men and machinery. The scene starts at dusk, and as night falls, the combination of flames and inky black sky heighten the drama. With very little dialogue, the actors play out a modern myth: Prometheus bringing down the sacred fire. It's a chilling scene when Plainview, staring out of oil-streaked eyes at the derrick, mutters to his assistant that the rig is OK, but that his son (injured in the initial explosion), isn't. You can see the calculations that Plainview makes throughout his career that eventually catch up with him.
There's so much in the way of film surprises that it would be best to see it for oneself. I highly recommend this movie. - 2008-10-28, 1 of 2 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- An overall waste of time.
- This movie was slow, boring, and full of nonsense characters. I don't understand how people could praise a movie devoid of story, plot, and characters who make any sort of sense.
I watched it twice just to see if I missed something, but no it really was as bad as I thought it was.
The lead character did things that contradicted actions earlier on in the film. I haven't read Oil! but if the writing is as bad as the movie, i'm shocked it was ever published. All the film people who suckered me into getting this movie can stick it, and no its not that I don't "get it." The cinematography may have been good but if I wanted something to look at I would go to an art museum. When I watch a movie I want story and hopefully some good characters to act the story out. I guess movies are just like the art world where once you make something good you can put anything on the screen and be praised. I usually like Paul Thomas Anderson, But unlike Boogie Nights and Magnolia this film is an oily turd. - 2008-10-20, 4 of 10 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- Epic Movie about an Epic Era
- This movie is as good as it gets in modern moviemaking. Daniel Day-Lewis, our greatest living actor, adds his greatest character portrayal yet to a seemingly unlimited range of characters past. He plays Daniel Plainview an oil wildcatter during the age of the post-Reconstruction "Robber Barons."
Not all of the Robber Barons were financial wizards like Jay Gould or conniving accounting monopolists like John D. Rockefeller, unethically stealing the profits of the hard working entrepreneurs who made the great oil and mineral discoveries of the time. Daniel represents the driven, rugged individualist who resisted and defeated Rockefeller and the railroads' attempts to reap the fortune of his almost literally back-breaking efforts.
But in his quest, struggle and ultimate financial success Plainview pays a heavy price. The brutal, ruthless life he leads to attain his ambition for wealth leaves him resembling more a denizen of nature than a resident of the human race. Whether he lost his soul in his childhood, in his quest, or never had one in the first place, is for the viewer to decide.
The scene with his "brother", Henry, is truly chilling when Daniel first reveals his brutal, misanthropic nature. Only Daniel Day-Lewis could deliver such blood curdling dialogue in that scene; slowly, in a philosophical manner explaining to Henry his hateful feelings toward all others with a fatalistic smile on his face. He is a man comfortable in a skin in which many others would not be. Kevin J. O'Connor's portrayal of Henry is outstanding as a desperate soul who never betrays Daniel, and is as loyal as a brother, but dies at Daniel's hand.
Daniel, as is shown throughout the movie, has a very perverse view of family and loyalty. The development of his relationship with his adoptive son, H.W., is the clearest view into Daniel's character and ultimately renders the final verdict on Daniel's lifelong quest for wealth. Daniel's hardened and embittered nature is never shown more pointedly, and brutally, than in his final scene with H.W. ("a [...]in a basket!"). It is the savagely destructive psychological counterpart to the physical destruction Daniel wreaks in the final scene with Eli Sunday, the "false prophet".
Paul Dano as Eli Sunday, the greedy charismatic preacher, has received many accolades for his performance. It is good, though not as good as O'Connor's "Henry" or the young H.W. (Dillon Freasier).
The main problem is not so much Dano's performance as his character's physical appearance. Day-Lewis ages slowly but markedly through the thirty-five year period of the movie. Dano, however, looks exactly the same age in the final confrontation in the bowling alley as he does when he first encounters Daniel at Eli's family dinner table.
There is also a scene later in the movie, some time after the scene at the family dinner table, in which Daniel beats and humiliates Eli in front of others. It is almost a cinematic non-sequitur since the tension and rivalry between the two has not built to the point to justify the scene.
Regardless, those two items of criticism are slight in the context of a truly great movie. The cinematography and the musical score lend greatly to its dark atmospherics. It is encouraging to see that it was written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson whose previous undistinguished work includes the voyeuristically juvenile "Boogie Nights" and the embarrassing attempt at romantic comedy, "Punch Drunk Love".
It does shows that an artist can grow beyond the exploitative and immature sides of Hollywood cinema as he matures. It undoubtedly helped Thomas to have Daniel Day-Lewis as the star, rather than an Adam Sandler. This is Day-Lewis's movie and he is the best.
I have used the word "brutal" on a number of occasions in this review. The era of the Robber Barons was just that. This movie effectively conveys the history you may read about the era and the unforgiving state of nature that produced men like Daniel Plainview.
As has been mentioned by other reviewers, the Plainview character is "loosely" based on a character named Vern Roscoe in the novel "Oil," written by Upton Sinclair. Sinclair's fictional character, in turn, was "loosely" based on a real person, named Edward L. Doheny. He is profiled in Wikipedia if you would like more information about him.
All such "loose" associations are irrelevant in a great movie. Anderson and Daniel Day-Lewis have produced a cinematic masterpiece. It will be considered a classic in due time because of the timelessness of its theme and the greatness of its performances.
I'm finished. - 2008-10-19, 0 of 2 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- very slow...pathetic...
- Very very slow movie and pathetic, I wonder how it got nominated for Oscar. People, if you think this movie is equivalent to last year oscar nominees like "Departed"/"Blood Diamond" please stay away from this.
- 2008-10-18, 3 of 8 people found this review helpful, Rated:
