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 |
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364 Customer Reviews Posted
- Citizen Plainview
- This movie will be known as one of the greats, one for the ages. Like other great films; Citizen Kane, 2001: A Space Odyssey etc, it is not for everyone. The pacing is deliberate, the characters complicated, the music bizarre, the moral of the story cloudy. But what a story.
We follow the career of Daniel Plainview- misanthrope, miser, oil-man- as he gains a fortune and loses everything that makes it worth having. Daniel Day-Lewis' performance is astounding, one of the most complete transformations in modern cinema. He perfectly captures the few moments of peace and humanity that Plainview has before rejecting human-kind as imperfect. And Paul Dano as Plainveiw's nemesis, the self-made (or self-deluded) preacher Eli, holds his own against the veteran actor. On one level, There Will Be Blood can be seen as the struggle between religion and capitalism, a clash of the titans with Plainview and Eli locked in a battle from which neither can back down. Very few films create such perfectly crafted characters with such real, moving and dramatic conflict between them. Their battle is at once epic and relatable as they continue to one-up the other in a series of betrayals and humiliations.
With such over-the-top performances, the whole movie could easily have degenerated into a camp-fest, but the restraint and calm of the cinematography and the deliberate pacing balances everything. Under the painstaking direction of Paul Thomas Anderson the film becomes a series of peaks and valleys, with periods of peace and violence as perfect as a Beethoven symphony.
But again, Beethoven isn't for everyone. And if none of the above appeals to you, by all means, please skip it. At nearly three hours it would be a painful experience to anyone who wasn't in the mood for it. I was awed by There Will Be Blood, I think its one of the greatest American films ever made. But its not the movie for a night of relaxing in front of the tv. There's a time for mindless entertainment, and a time for something more. When you want something more- then give There Will Be Blood a try. - 2008-09-15, 1 of 2 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- An extraordinary American story
- Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day Lewis), a man filled with hatred and disdain for the human race, spends his life sucking oil from the ground and amassing a fortune. His power and wealth allow him to look down on the rest of humanity, but cannot protect him from his own self-contempt.
Paul Thomas Anderson's epic film is a deeply cynical meditation on two forces that defined the rise of America, entrepreneurialism and religion. It features great performances and a magnificent evocation of the oil fields of the West during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. There are many fascinating aspects of this film, but the most interesting may be Plainview's lifelong enmity toward the charismatic preacher Eli Sunday (Paul Dano), whose flock represents for Plainview all that is gullible and foolish in people. The two men humiliate each other in several remarkable scenes, most notably the one in which Plainview is coerced into joining the church in order to gain some land rights; it's a tour de force performance from Day Lewis. Jonny Greenwood's extraordinary, unique soundtrack is unexpected but totally appropriate. I'm sure that this rich film will reward many repeat viewings. - 2008-09-13, 1 of 2 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- Entertaining but not a truly great movie
- This is an entertaining OK movie. Not one of the greats as many previous reviewers have written. I won't go through the story-line because others have done a good job on that. And yes the cinematography is beautiful. But I have two problems with this film. Firstly, the story itself. OK, two rival characters each tormented by their own obsessions set in an epic historical background. But so what? We've seen that stuff so many times before. It's what Hollywood's about. Which makes it too self-consciously an attempt at 'greatness.' And that's where it goes wrong. Foreign films don't make this mistake the way we do in America. They convey a message and then let the viewer decide whether the movie's great. It's like we're constantly being reminded "this is a great movie, guys." Secondly, I have a problem with Day Lewis himself and found the preacher more convincing. Day Lewis is too perfect. He's such a competent method actor that I found myself wondering - maybe one day we can programme a robot to act perfectly and we won't need actors. Like Meryl Streep. For me when you see a truly great actor perform not only must they be competent but they must seem human. Bogart plays hundreds of different characters convincingly but you somehow can see Bogart's soul shining through as well as the soul of the characters he acts. Day Lewis is a great vehicle but who is Day Lewis himself? Having seen many films of his I still don't know. It sounds strange but he's almost so good at acting that he seems empty himself.
- 2008-09-10, 2 of 5 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- An Oily Citizen Kane
- For a while, I thought the arc of this movie was going to parallel the classic "Citizen Kane" trajectory, with Daniel Day-Lewis' character rising from humble beginnings and snatched opportunities as an oil well rigger - to a hollow, rattling, rambling millionaire alone amidst his riches. However, just as I thought I had the character's conclusion pegged that way, the movie made another catapult into new territory.
Everything about this movie proceeds by jagged, akimbo grasshopper leaps, like the ones that might be made by the giant grasshopper-like well pumps that dominate the film's landscapes. "Blood" has a distinctive beat to its plot - just as its score has a distinctive beat marked by industrial clanks and crunches.
The plot is loosely based on Upton Sinclair's book, "Oil," exposing the greed and chicanery rampant in the oil mining industry. However where Sinclair's book made the protagonist's adversaries a consortium of industrialists - this movie made Lewis' main adversaries a group of religious fundamentalists. That was a daring choice, but it does give the action another dimension.
Paul Dano is superb as the two-faced religious leader - so smooth and passively faith-basted on the one hand - so much the raging tyrant on the other. However Daniel Day-Lewis brings in the tour de force performance as oilman extraordinaire. This is a memorable film on all scores. - 2008-09-09, 0 of 1 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- A Very Brilliant Daniel Day-Lewis
- I was blown away by his performance. A Simple story of a man struggling to make a living without the support of a wife.... only a somewhat challenging child. What seems slow at first picks up the pace as new characters are introduced. It is then we get to see people's personalities evolve under changing circumstances. (The preacher man was a riot.)
- 2008-09-08, 0 of 1 people found this review helpful, Rated:
